
Class J^_JS^_51 
CopightN" . 13AU 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



SELECTIONS: KATHARINE COOLIDGE 



SELECTIONS 

KATHARINE COOLIDGE 




BOSTON : PRIVATELY PRINTED AT 
THE MERRYMOUNT PRESS 1901 



COPYRIGHT BY J. T. COOLIDGE, JR., rgoz 







Nothing which throws light upon a rare and beau- 
tiful spirit can he thought trivial or too personal; 
and so it has seemed well to print passages from 
: , the writings of Katharine Coolidge which show the 
r simple and domestic side of her life^ as well as those 
if which reveal its grave and beautiful depths, 
i These sele5iions will perhaps help her friends bet- 
?o ter to understand her spiritual nature in its strug- 
o gles for Light and 'Truth, and to realize the eager- 
^ ness wifh which she met all human relations, seeking, 
with instant sympathy and with the comprehension 
of her serene spirit, their divine meaning. 

They show that, although she reached out to regions 
far beyond us, yet she remained in close touch with 
the things of earthy and they had for her a deep reality : 
Nature which she worshipped in her gar den ^ in the 
woods, in the fields and the mountains — was real. 
Life was real^ as Heaven was real and near to her; 
and as she grew in larger vision and experience^ 
evil too, and illness and suffering took their places 
as realities which were not to be denied in the great 
scheme of human destiny. 

But whatever experience she touched, was uplifted 
by a faith in the rightness of all things which noth- 
ing could disturb. Evil existed indeed, but her nature 
turned instinctively to the goody which she seemed 
to have the divine gift of drawing out from every 
one who came within reach of her calm influence. 

This book has been printed for her friends — for 
those to whom she wrote, as well as for those to 
whom her nature revealed itself in other ways. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



SELECTIONS 

A MODERN EXPRESSION OF THE OLDEST PHI- 
LOSOPHY 
POWER THROUGH FAITH 
EMILE ZOLA AND FAITH 

LETTERS TO ITALY 

TO J. T. C, JR., 1893 

JOURNAL 

EXTRACTS BETWEEN 1895 AND 1897 

LETTERS 

WRITTEN TO FRIENDS 

POEMS 
MNEMOSYNE 
SONG 
SONNET 
SONNET 

IN IMMEMORIAL WORLDS 
SONNET 
SONNET 

"TRISTAN UND ISOLDE** 
SONNET 
SONNET 
SONNET 

FUTURE AND PAST 
SONNET 
SONNET 
TO F. P. 



3 

6 

10 

13-21 
23-35 

37-84 

85-117 
87 
88 
89 
90 

91 
92 

93 

94 

95 
96 

97 
98 

100 

lOI 

102 



104 

105 



POEMS (Continued) 

FRAGMENT 

SONG 

FRAGMENT 

WANDERERS ,o6 

FRAGMENT ,07 

FROM THE BOSOM OF NIGHT no 

MOTHERHOOD 1,2 

BE STILL 114 

THE LILY AND THE FROZEN SEA 115 

THE MYSTERY OF THE MIST ,16 



SELECTIONS 



IC^fiT^-",*-, ' T '' 'f " i'*l>s -iD^'^ 



I nm 




SELECTIONS 
A MODERN EXPRESSION OF THE OLDEST 
PHILOSOPHY: From the "Arena," 1893 
. . . Perfect vision is ours if we will use it. We can feel 
an adlual Presence, infinitely nearer and more real than 
any tangible thing — a presence within and around us, 
which dispels fear and pain, and lifts us beyond their 
power. Its peace we may send forth on the wings of love 
to those who have need of its healing touch. All things 
are possible unto us when we know our true being in 
God. The way is before us if we will but walk in it. The 
only barrier is the intense self-consciousness which turns 
us back upon our finite selves and holds us imprisoned 
there. Faith and Love are the only talismans to open wide 
the prison doors and destroy this monster who guards the 
way. Only faith and love can pierce the clouds to the 
unseen, and cause the seen to glow with a new light ; for 
the life of the seen Is in the unseen ; the life of matter is 
in spirit. All is spiritual, all is pervaded by one stream of 
living water, of which all may drink who will. When we 
knew thisj when, breathing with all life, we put forth 
our thought in harmony with the creative thought, our 
mortal pidlure of the heavens and earth shall pass away, 
and God's world shall become visible to us. 
The sense of separateness belongs to the demon of self- 
consciousness. In moments of self-forgetfulness we feel 
our kinship with Nature, and, throbbing with its pulse, 
have glimpses of the truth, in which we are united to all 
that lives and to all that gives life. There is no more 
room for the pride of self, no sense of degrees of great or 
small ; only the perception that the life within us reaches 
out through space and time ; is one with the nearest blade 
of grass and the most distant star in the heavens ; is one 
with all that was, or is, or ever shall be ; for in ourselves 
we feel the same life that fills the universe, and is with- 



out beginning and without end. 

There are no barriers of time or space or bodily existence 
between soul and soul. To love is to mingle, to think 
is to be that which we think. We are not bound with 
chains and forced to long passionately for the unattain- 
able, but we are borne on the wings of the spirit whither- 
soever our desire attra6ls us, when our will is united to 
the one Will. Thus we come to the peace that passeth 
understanding, and the love on which hang all the law 
and the prophets. And yet the first conscious upward 
steps do not always bring peace, but a sword. We can no 
longer exist comfortably in our lower selves, and in a 
transition state are racked between apparently opposing 
forces. We are drawn irresistibly towards the heavens, 
yet cannot let go our hold of the earth. Neither should 
we let go our hold to soar indifferent in celestial regions. 
We must loosen the selfish grip, but not the grip of love. 
It may seem at first that we must be torn asunder be- 
tween the upward force and the lower hold, but sufiicient 
strength will be given to lift the earth with us as we go. 
So when perforce our grasp is loosened, the dear old earth 
has a little more light, is a little nearer the knowledge 
of that which she really is. If we attempt to lift our bur- 
den with our finite strength alone, we are tortured and 
crushed. The only strength that can avail is that of faith 
and love, which must so fill us that the finite self, the rest- 
less thing that suffers and fights, is so transformed that we 
are not even conscious of a weight. Opposites blend in 
one. We no longer feel separate centres of gravity, but 
know that the only attraction for all things that have be- 
ing, is the one light of the world, which shall surely draw 
us to itself 5 which, indeed, holds us now and forever. 
We begin and end with God. There is nothing else. 
When we lose sight of Him, we pass through strange 
shadow-lands, and are beset by phantoms of evil. Reli- 
gion tells us, indeed, to look beyond, and yet leaves us 
4 



vi<Sims to our present blindness. Science observes and 
classifies the pursuing phantoms, and tells us that by un- 
derstanding their nature we may escape them. And still 
they hold us in their death-like clutch. Christ put them 
to instant flight by the spiritual power which brought 
light to our darkness ; and He taught His disciples to use 
their healing power for the minds and bodies of men. We 
Christians have not followed in the path He showed us. 
We have this same power within us. Have we so little 
faith, so little love, that we cannot use it to help our 
brothers out of their pain ? 

Already a beginning has been made, and many are cross- 
ing the threshold of a new life. This life means deep con- 
secration to one end, and perfect willingness to make any 
sacrifice. Above all, it means great love. Then comes a 
constantly growing power to receive and give forth life. 
Weak enough at first is our hold of this power in the face 
of the terrible need throughout the world, but still mighty 
to help, because it reaches the inner life of the spirit, from 
which all things spring. Sooner or later, here or else- 
where, we must all become conscious of life. Why do 
we negle6l it now, when humanity reaches out passion- 
ately for that peace which comes only of the fulness of 
life ? Every one of us can find it ; every one of us can 
give it forth, and receive more in the giving. The more 
intense our desire to help, the more does the message of 
life penetrate every seeming veil : strength of desire gives 
it wings, and carries it whithersoever our thought wills. 
The deeper our feeling of the aftual presence of God in 
every breath, in every atom, the more nearly do we reach 
the ftilfilment of all life. The greater our love, the stronger 
its power to fill and transform all that it touches. 
Sight, love, and passionate desire to give forth in the spirit 
to all who hunger must break our self-made bonds, and 
show us our birthright. So as we open our eyes the shadow- 
land disappears in the light of God's presence. 

5 



POWER THROUGH FAITH. 1893 

FAITH gives peace, and peace gives strength to do 
whatever we have to do. And that fa6l in itself would 
be enough to regenerate the world, would each individ- 
ual accept and pradlise it ; but there is a yet deeper truth, 
clear only to those who have felt it : that faith in God 
allies the soul with hidden forces of Nature which work 
for righteousness and harmony, and gives to that soul a 
power not its own with which to do God's will on earth 
as it is done in Heaven. 

"And these signs shall follow them that believe : in my 
name shall they cast out devils ; they shall speak with new 
tongues ; they shall take up serpents, and if they drink 
any deadly thing, it shall in no wise hurt them ; they shall 
lay their hands on the sick, and they shall recover." 
This truth rests not only upon what others have told us 
through the centuries, but upon that which many have 
proved even in this generation, of the power of faith to 
renew every manifestation of life, and which each one 
can begin to prove for himself here and now. To do this 
we must first have the strong desire to seek and find the 
highest : a desire strong enough to transcend all selfish 
aims, and to fill the soul with a longing for Life. The 
indifferent may well be unbelievers ; they have not the 
first essential for the attainment of the heavenly vision, 
— that fire of the spirit which burns its way into the very 
heart of creation and mingles with the infinite. " How 
can ye believe which receive glory one of another, and 
the glory that cometh from the only God ye seek not ? " 
No half allegiance will pierce the veil, no dallying with 
truth while still looking the other way. Our possibilities 
will remain a myth, an unproved fairy tale, to those who 
will not resolutely push aside the thicket and give their 
whole strength to finding the way. 
The average human being wanders to and fro with wa- 
vering purpose and weak faith, dividing his mind into 
6 



fragments, without the will to do wholly that which he 
has to do. The secret of success in any dire6lion lies in 
the possession of a dominant idea. We must seek the 
Kingdom of Heaven with our whole hearts. All who 
knock persistently and passionately shall enter, for the 
constant fixing of the mind upon the inner light burns 
through the veil, and extends the sight into that part of 
God's universe which we call the unseen. Glimpses of 
heaven shine through the mist of the earth, and faith 
grows with the vision ; for faith is not a blind belief in 
the mysterious unknown. Faith is sight, — spiritual per- 
ception of a life within, which is linked with all life ; 
which is a part of the very source of life : the creative 
principle which breathes through the universe — God. 
Having then the divine desire, how shall we dire6l our 
search? The Kingdom of Heaven is within. We must 
seek first in our own hearts to find God. "Enter into 
thine inner chamber and having shut thy door, pray to 
thy Father which is in secret, and thy Father which seeth 
in secret shall recompense thee." 

To become conscious of God we must learn to enter the 
secret places of the soul, shutting the door to every intru- 
sion of outside thoughts, or tendency to fruitless revery. 
Then having put away earthly worries and selfish desires, 
thus freeing the soul of all that trammels it, we can listen 
calmly to the voice of God in our hearts. We can begin to 
see the light which burns within each and all: "the light 
that lighteth every man that cometh into the world." It is 
the holy flame of life, — that marvellous vitality which 
comes from the unseen and manifests itself in visible 
form. 

When man so identifies his will with the essence of life, 
he absorbs an undying vitality and feels the expanding 
breath of the Spirit. He can soon find his power to send 
it forth wheresoever he will, for by virtue of his light he 
is in touch with God and man, and nature. Before he can 

7 



radiate good with any force, he must learn to find and 
hold his centre. A great faith will give this power of be- 
coming absorbed in the spirit; but for those who have only 
a weak faith and long for more, for those who are con- 
stantly turned aside by necessary distra<5lions, but desire 
to help their fellow-men from a better vantage ground, 
it is necessary to learn to throw the whole self into one 
idea, to command the consciousness and direft and keep 
it where they will, to identify the heart and soul and mind 
with the spiritual life which is the essence of all forms 
and organizations. 

Man has the power to cooperate with this world force, 
and once knowing it, he has access to the inner life of Na- 
ture, and the prayer that he breathes forth is borne surely 
to its end on the strong currents of the spirit. " Have faith 
in God." "And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in 
prayer, believing, ye shall receive." Prayer is the divinely 
natural state of man. We need not strain for a conscious- 
ness of something mystical and far away which we rest- 
lessly long to grasp. That is not true prayer, for it leads 
the heart away from humanity, instead of giving it a deeper 
sympathy. There is no need of reaching out painfully for 
that Presence which is so near that " Closer is He than 
breathing, and nearer than hands or feet." We can feel 
the Presence of God as simply and naturally as we feel 
human love. We can breathe in inspiration as we breathe 
in the air. Heaven which is the fulness of life is here, for 
God is here. We can draw aside the veil from our hearts, 
and feel its peace, and we can give that peace to our bro- 
thers and sisters, for all hearts are one. 
This Christ-like power must be passionately and lovingly 
sought, — not for self, for therein lies that which we call 
evil, that we have used the power of God within us for 
our own finite ends, rather than for His glory. We must 
seek in love of God and man, that life may be made simple 
and free to all. Only by thus seeking can man know the 
8 



truth of his divinity, and only by finding it can he attain 
unto his kingdom ; for he does not fulfil his real need, 
does not bring peace on earth, nor good will to men, un- 
til he finds himself, — his divine self. Then all things shall 
be added unto him. So only can man comprehend the law 
of the universe; so only can he wholly unite his force with 
the power that works for righteousness. 
There is an infinity of light about us. Within us each 
glows a part of that same light. In some hearts it is a 
glowing flame, in others a feeble spark, but always an 
integral part of the eternal. Around each individual fire 
there seems to be a shell which may be called the lower 
self, encasing it, and preventing it from mingling with 
its source. Our light is hidden under a bushel, and we 
know not where to find it. It longs passionately to min- 
gle with all light, and renew its radiance. Naturally life 
leaps to life, and if there is a barrier between, there must 
be tearing and rending, with its consequent agony. 
Our absorbing aim then should be to liberate the light 
that burns in all men, that it may shine forth in all its 
radiance, undimmed by the barriers of self-love and ig- 
norance which seem to hide it. When we identify with 
it our whole being ; when we know it as the light of life, 
— the God within each one of us, — then we hold the key 
to existence. Every smallest a6lion is glorified in its ra- 
diance, as the flying dust of the highway is transfigured 
in the rays of the sun. Once recognize the power of the 
children of God to overcome evil with good, by faith and 
prayer, and the way is open to the daily service of man- 
kind. So we may serve our brothers simply from heart 
to heart. So we may find the peace on earth which is pos- 
sible only through faith in God ; the kingdom of heaven 
which is in the united hearts of men. 



EMILE ±OLA AND FAITH 
December, 1894 

MONSIEUR Zola's recent novel "Lourdes" can 
hardly fail to leave several very strong impres- 
sions in the mind of the reader. 

Three strong ideas stand out from the mass of descrip- 
tion and narrative. One is the writer's intense feeling for 
the sufferings of humanity, and for their need of some 
help and hope beyond the commonplace fadls of exist- 
ence. Another is his absolute denial of the possibility of 
the supernatural, — of the miracle as something outside 
of Nature caused by the arbitrary intervention of Deity. 
And the third is his acceptance (founded apparently on 
investigation and study) of certain psychological laws, 
workings of nature on a plane which is as yet little un- 
derstood, and which under certain conditions will pro- 
duce seeming miracles. With these three ideas as a basis, 
M. Zola's own conclusions are very singular. His ma- 
terialism is too deeply rooted to allow him to go a step 
farther, where he might see that a deeper understanding 
of Nature would give even more help and inspiration 
to the world than the ignorant belief in miracles. With 
all his worship of reason he does not follow reason to 
its natural conclusions. By stating that the old faith in 
the supernatural is an illusion and a lie, and that certain 
apparently miraculous phenomena are due to Nature 
alone, he seems to think that reason has taken away the 
last support of an agonizing world, and that it must 
either suffer hopelessly on — or else blindly cling to its 
illusion and its lie. That the Divine may be found in 
the natural and that redemption may come through the 
understanding of these divinely natural laws which he 
recognizes, does not seem to occur to him. In his mind 
truth and error are very simply divided. The " Real " is 
the world which can be apprehended by the senses — a 

10 



world in which he sees great beauty, deep emotions, 
much joy, and also much hopeless misery. For the happy 
it is all very well — for the miserable there is no hope 
but in the blind belief in the unreal — the supernatural 
— the illusion — the lie — and they must have their lie 
to believe in, because otherwise life would be too hard 
to bear. And he really feels their misery intensely, for 
no man could describe it with such pathos unless it had 
gone deep into his heart. 

That a state of spiritual exaltation will under certain 
conditions give health to the dying body and lasting cour- 
age and buoyancy to the mind, he records as an estab- 
lished fadl of nature ; also that when a crowd is uplifted 
by faith and reverence there is a "souffle guerisseur" 
which emanates from them. But because these things 
are natural and not supernatural, they seem to him of no 
value. Because faith operates from within, because we 
have in our own hearts the potentiality of the Kingdom 
of Heaven, because God works through Nature, through 
law, instead of by arbitrary intervention contrary to law, 
M. Zola thinks that faith must die in the light of rea- 
son. His idea of faith is so one with the supernatural idea, 
that although he conscientiously tells us the story of the 
uplifting through faith, he draws no conclusions, con- 
ceives no hope, from the divinely natural forces which 
he describes. 

Could M. Zola but see it, he has unconsciously, but per- 
haps none the less strongly pointed to the truth, that 
hope and strength for us suffering human beings lie not 
so much in reaching out towards an imaginary order of 
things quite separate and alien from ourselves — as in 
steadfastly seeking within our own spiritual nature for 
the truth which shall set us free. 



II 



LETTERS TO ITALY TO J. T. C, JR, 
1893 



LETTERS TO ITALY TO J. T. C, JR. 
JANUARY SEVENTEENTH, 1893 

I WENT down the harbor yesterday to Deer Island! 
It was largely frozen over and very beautiful in the 
sun. We were a party of Children's Aid Society people, 
and went all over the men's and women's and boys* de- 
partments. It was pretty sad. They seemed only half 
human when you saw them in crowds ; and in the even- 
ing I went to a big musical party. The contrast was tre- 
mendous, but the people at the party, smiling in gorgeous 
clothes, seemed less genuine somehow than the Deer 
Island convi6ls, though that was only the efFedt of ar- 
tificial surroundings. 

JANUARY TWENTY-NINTH 

I WISH you had been here to see and feel the thrill 
that has gone through the whole people at the life 
( I cannot call it death ) of Phillips Brooks. It is a splen- 
did thing that such a life as that should be so universally 
felt, and it shows that the general public are most moved 
by the highest things, after all. There were twenty thou- 
sand people in Copley Square for the out-of-door exer- 
cises — the stores were closed, and the cars stopped. 
S. and I went to the Church service. There was nothing 
funereal about it, although every one was crying. It was 
joy and life and a sense of uplifting, because his life was 
so intensely real and vital, that death could not touch or 
change it. 

It is not merely that I feel that way ; but that his going 
away has given just that culminating touch to his teach- 
ing, and every one is lifted up by it. 

JANUARY THIRTY-FIRST 

... It is so glorious a thing to live, and to work, and to 

love and serve, and so to see more and more what life 

really is. Art is the expression of that splendid fulness of 

life. 

15 



FEBRUARY THIRD 

I FOUND out long ago that it was of no use to love 
any one thing unless it made one's love greater for 
everything. ... I love my home so intensely — I see 
such glorious things through the efforts and striving of 
a transition state, that I long passionately to have you 
feel it too. . . . 

I am not at all in the rush, but care more and more for 
quiet rather than for constant outward activity — pro- 
vided the quiet means inward a6livity and communion, 
and not stagnation. 

FEBRUARY THIRTEENTH 

. . . The other day at a Damrosch concert they played 
a divine part of "Tristan und Isolde." It sent great waves 
and throbs all thro' me, and I was with you while they 
played it. There is an amazing young French violinist 
here — Henri Marteau — a beardless boy — who plays 
as if he had lived through every emotion, human or di- 
vine, and he has the face of a child. It must come straight 
out of the unseen of which his skill is but the channel. 

FEBRUARY TWENTY-FOURTH 
... It is the feeling in art that I care for, and not any 
intellectual idea. I often say idea meaning feeling. It is 
too good a word to apply to the intellect. Some very pow- 
erful, and in one sense, artistic pictures, give a worldly 
or of the earth earthy atmosphere, and make one feel 
that side of things and breathe it in. Then I don't care 
how strong in Art they are — it is not true art. True 
art touches the real pulse of life, deep down in the heart 
.of things, and makes you vibrate with its pulse, no mat- 
ter how or through what medium — a squash or an angel 
— provided it is felt vitally. 

You will laugh at me for discoursing a la Ruskin, but 
I don't mind. 



i6 



FEBRUARY TWENTY-SEVENTH 

1IFE is overflowing with beauty and richness every- 
j where if one can find it. I seem to have touched 
some hidden spring lately, more than ever before, and to 
feel its vibration in everything — in music, in painting, 
in personalities — even in snow-storms; and I am sure 
it is here as everywhere, waiting for some master hand 
to translate it more freely into a form that all can read. 
It is written everywhere in Italy ; but the thing itself 
is here too, and if you once touch it and feel its throb 
and pulse — you do not miss its outer garments so much. 
I have been reading Mazzini's essays, and they are stun- 
ning, A little too violent about the Papacy, but other- 
wise splendid. 

MARCH FOURTH 

I DO not think that the past is dead — no, indeed, — it 
lives in the present eternally when we enter into its 
spirit. I only think that we should work from an ever fresh 
inspiration, springing up within us, and not merely try 
(as some do) to stupidly copy the past. We need its spirit 
sadly, and I am sure there is a " wave " coming which shall 
revive its ever living spirit, and yet have something new 
too — a new birth. The World's Fair seems to me con- 
trary to all that — on the other side of things — the side 
of cussed material progress and the worship of mammon. 

MARCH THIRTEENTH 

LAST night I heard the Russian choir at Mrs. S.'s — 
J regular peasants in wonderful and beautiful cos- 
tumes — twenty of them. Very Cossack type, and sang 
enchantingly — mostly masses and prayers. Those primi- 
tive people know more than we do in many ways after all. 

MARCH SIXTEENTH 

DEAR — I had a very full day yesterday — a mix- 
ture of pain and pleasure. I had a special delivery 
early from C. H. to say that H. had died that morning 

17 



at the Children's Hospital, I went right up there and 
found her very calm and sweet, and as to the child's face 
— I shall never forget it — it had all the dignity and calm 
of a man who had lived and thought for long. Respe<5l 
was one's feeling, and happiness that his mind had found 
a larger field to work in. . . . Then I went into a rabbit 
hutch of humanity which was infinitely sadder, — Death 
seems so simple and beautiful compared to the dregs of 
life. Miss M. and E. F. came unexpectedly to lunch, the 
latter stayed long to talk about some one she wants to 
help; and then came A. full of — plans, etc. I went with 

him to see the 's and came home to put on a ball 

dress and go to a dinner! Our life here is a queer mix- 
ture. I felt gayer than usual too, at the dinner. . . . 
We have had a delicious touch of Spring in which I 
opened and expanded like a bud in the sunshine. 
One evening I felt you as an aCtual presence in the room. 
It was just as if you walked in and were here. I did not 
see you through my physical eyes, but felt you. 
The unseen — the truly natural — comes nearer and 
closer all the time, and I feel and know more and more 
that the Source of all life and love is there — close and 
accessible to us. 

APRIL SEVENTH 

THOMAS A Kempis is right — sensations are dan- 
gerous ground — and in all that region it is most 
important to hold fast to the very highest, and not pay at- 
tention to phenomenal occurrences — above all not seek 
them. On the other hand, the feeling that comes of love 
and the presence of the one loved, and nearness in the 
Spirit^ is true and high I am sure. . . . 
If we are true to the Highest, we can take what comes, 
but not attribute much importance to it, and not be 
charmed by it — but stick fast to the Source. 



i8 



APRIL THIRTEENTH 

I HAVE seen the Duse for the last two nights. Once 
with S. and once with Aunt M. — "Camille" and 
" Fedora." She is far too good for such plays, of which the 
latter is hateful; but in spite of the plays she is wonderful 
— much greater and higher up than any one I ever saw 
on the stage. It is like looking on at the real thing. There 
is no staginess or seeking for effedl — you feel a real wo- 
man — on a fine scale, who is not thinking of herself but 
throwing her whole nature into the chara6ler and emo- 
tions she is adling. Her face is fascinating and strange. 
Sara as she has been of late seems like a sort of afFedted 
monkey by the side of this real person. . . . She (Duse) is 
such an artist and so absolutely simple and straightforward 
from her heart. 

APRIL SIXTEENTH 

1HAD an interesting talk with T. D., telling him of 
your impressions of Italy and Primitive Art. He 
adores Assisi as the holiest place he ever felt — and 
adores primitive Art and the Primitives because they 
had so much to say — so much emotion and reality 
— even though they did not always know how to say 
it. He feels that now we have mastered methods and 
technicalities, and formed schools and cliques — and 
then nothing ! — because the emotion and substance are 
not there — and he expressed what I have long felt, 
that the method, the technique, or medium of expres- 
sion should never be sought after by itself and for itself 
— but be found only when some great thing is seeking 
for utterance. Then it is very sure to find its medium 
and to express itself. 

It is all sham to gain such mastery over the outside shell 
of things, when there is no kernel. If the true emotion 
is there, and has got to come out, it will find its way in 
the nature of things, and its way will be much more beau- 

19 



tiful than the artificially paved road of any particular 
school, or any forced mould of training. If the emotion 
is not there, people had better keep quiet until it comes, 
and not produce shams, however faultless. 
I do not agree with the meaning of your sentence, "Are 
we not put into this world to work out our destinies in 
it as it is, rather than to strive to bring into it things 
which belong to another world ! " I agree rather with 
Christ and the prophets and sages of all time — that 
the Kingdom of Heaven is within (not another separated 
world) and that all things are possible to the children 
who recognize their Father and their birthright, — that 
the conditions and limitations of the "world as it is" 
depend upon the conditions and limitations of the hu- 
man consciousness, and that it is our whole duty and 
destiny to uplift and expand our hearts into that King- 
dom of Heaven here and now^ not to say — our hands are 
bound, we must wait for the last trump. Liberty will 
never come that way, though we should die a thousand 
deaths in the flesh, and live a thousand lives. 
I know that it is dangerous to seek phenomenal things 
first — and unhealthy — but I know that if we seek the 
Kingdom of Heaven with perfe6l singleness of heart — 
all things shall be added unto us, and " the world as it 
is " will expand and be glorified in our sight until it be- 
comes Heaven. As Emerson says, "we shall enter into 
our kingdom with no more wonder than the blind man 
feels who is restored to perfedl sight." 

APRIL TWENTY-SIXTH 

JACK is downstairs riding the tricycle up and down. 
He is full of queries about the eternal verities, and 
much interested in a future state of perfection ! As he is 
not instructed on the subjeft, it is quite spontaneous. 
One of his original ideas is that in Heaven we shall have 
no fear of anything ! A more concrete question was : 

20 



" Why does not the sky bend when God stands on it ? *' 
and "How do people get wings?" , . . 
Getting rid of things is one of the great joys of existence 
to me — especially when they go to fill a real need some- 
where else. 

APRIL TWENTY-SEVENTH 

DID L. wear well ! What is the good of spending 
fifty sittings at perfe6tly reproducing in flat some 
brass reliefs which are only a work of art themselves, and 
not the real thing ? Life here is too short, and too full 
of real, great living things, to waste on dead things. 
Emerson says something like this: "I tell you there is 
no practical aim, however large, which does not, if pur- 
sued for its own sake, become carrion and an offence to 
the nostrils." He means that the thing itself must never 
be an end but only a means towards the greatest end of 
Life itself. And that is the way the simplest and crud- 
est primitive painting makes me feel. So do a few mod- 
erns. . . . L. leaves one empty and unsatisfied, with a 
sense of disappointment, because the outside of the plat- 
ter is so perfeft — and inside — a blank. 
His fiery vitality is splendid. I wish he would n't waste 
any of it. There is enough need In the world of such 
impulse and enthusiasm. If it were all direfted from the 
heart, we should be better off than we are. 
. . . has got a teacher for the children. I kept out of It. 
I want to kick over training, and have Nature's part of 
the year at least, and as the children are not stupid or 
backward, there is no need of summer schooling. I hope 
Molly will draw and carve and otherwise run wild. Do 
you agree ? The teacher is to give them lessons for one 
and one-half hours, and then have "practical natural 
history " which is likely to mean putting spikes through 
inserts. / 



21 



JOURNAL 



JOURNAL 

1895 
MARCH ELEVENTH 

ONE part of me sees more clearly than ever into an 
ideal world of light and love and liberty ... all that 
is divinely beautiful in the world — flowers — music — 
the sky — the sun — speak to me of free life and tender- 
ness and love as it springs up in Nature, unsought and 
untrammelled. . . . 

Deep emotion breaks through the veil into the spiritual 
world, and makes us feel men*s souls and the soul of Na- 
ture as we can never feel them otherwise. In one sense 
— the spiritual sense — perhaps the truest glimpses of real 
sanity and perception of reality that we have, are at those 
times when the unknown deeps are so stirred that we see 
into other deeps of persons and worlds, which are other- 
wise sealed to our eyes. ... I sometimes feel color and 
all beauty as I never did, and seem at times to feel the 
very heart of God. But everywhere are paradoxes and 
contradictions. The infinite is close; close all around 
and within us, and yet the finite may be terribly out 
of harmony, and our souls are torn between them. 

MARCH TWELFTH 

I CAN no longer accept the kind of abstract idealism 
which makes all the world of appearances a mere 
phantasmagoria — a fi(5tion of humanity in which God 
has no part. With all my heart and soul I know that as the 
soul within us grows and expands, our outward world, 
whether in our own bodies or in Nature, is uplifted and 
purified, and responds to the divine in man. Just as much 
as we know and feel of divinity within us — we know 
and feel and see in all Nature. But this growth and ex- 
pansion cannot be all outside of God, and a mere illu- 
sion. 

Humanity, even in its weakness and sin, must be in the 

25 



consciousness of God ; and although sin and disease will 
melt away like a dream in the full light — still even the 
dream and the blindness which dreams, must be intended 
and understood by the Supreme Life of all. 
Life and death are not in our little finite hands. Prayer 
is mighty, and "all things are possible to him that be- 
lieveth" — that is one of the very deepest truths, and 
with it another which seems to contradi6l it, and yet 
cannot, and does not contradi6l it, — the truth of Des- 
tiny. Each must go on his way at the time appointed. 
We may struggle and labor and take thought for the 
morrow, and all is useless to bring about or avert any 
event which must happen. Our works should be all di- 
re<5led toward divine ends. . . . We should let the finite 
events go, and strive with all our strength to make our- 
selves one with the Cause and Heart of it all. Then we 
could be at peace. 

MARCH FOURTEENTH 

... Is this material world the opposite and negation of 
the true world, and must we agonize here as soon as we 
feel the divine fire within us ? I had always believed the 
opposite, and thought that the more of the divine we 
realized, the more harmony could we bring into the earth 
life here and now. 

Of course the suffering is largely sin — self-will — hold- 
ing on to personal desire — lack of brotherly love and 
sympathy — the purely human attributes which hold us 
from the ideal ; but that is not all — beneath all that is a 
suffering and an unutterable longing which springs from 
the very God within us, and which cannot find itself 
here, and so agonizes — perhaps until death sets it free. 

MARCH FIFTEENTH 

HAVE been reading Wagner's Nibelung Trilogy. 
The man is a giant in his written drama as in his 
music. It is splendid artistically, and splendid as an ex- 
26 



pression of that very divine dual nature, and consequent 
confli6t. There is the conflidl betw^een law and instinct 
— betw^een the head and the heart — between the intel- 
leftual will and the passionate, spontaneous will ; and all 
going on in the soul of Wotan, the God. 
Then the consequent fall and redemption, and the ulti- 
mate triumph of Love when freed from the world of 
limitation and sense. I hardly know what it teaches — 
the path of duty is left rather in the vague, and one just 
feels the great, overpowering elementary forces at work 
in the world — Love and Fate — Desire and Renuncia- 
tion — and the triumph of the Spiritual only after the 
Fall, and the return of material power in the shape of 
the Rheingold, to its native elements. 
Siegfried — the hero — is born out of terrible suffering. 
How much does that symbol mean ? 

MARCH TWENTIETH 

1AST night a young woman was introduced to me 
J because of her enthusiasm over my one published 
essay.* Occasionally I still hear from it as having so 
much helped this or that person, and it gives a strange 
feeling of impersonality. The thing was written out of 
my soul before I had really known suffering. It is still 
deeply true to me . . . and in writing it again I should 
have to take more account of the human and personal 
and finite, than I did then, in the pride of an untried 
strength. 

In one sense, the essay seems like an utterly impersonal 
expression of truth — an expression in which I have no 
part now. In another sense it makes one feel the neces- 
sity and responsibility of standing by one's colors, and 
trying to rise again and live in a light that one has not 
only seen and felt, but tried to give to others. 
How easy it seemed then to worship love and truth and 

* A Modern Expression of the Oldest Philosophy, ^^ Arena" 1 893. 

27 



help to lift the whole world into the same reverence and 
knowledge. . . . 

Prayer and vision and divine love put us in deeper, more 
intimate touch with great hidden world forces. If like the 
saints we renounce all selfish desire as we go on, then all 
is well, and we know more and more of God. But if we 
enter the plane of the higher forces without real renun- 
ciation of self; then those forces may seize and sweep 
us where we would not, and we go down in the tempest 
we have ignorantly invoked. 

Tet the very storm is divine and the fire purifying, 

God help us to understand^ and to learn, 

MARCH TWENTY-SEVENTH 

TO be able to let go absolutely — to leave personal 
desires, aims, aspirations even, and throw oneself 
with perfe6l abandonment into the current of the whole 
of things — there would be freedom and peace, — to lose 
all and find God. ... I used to think that we could 
build our own world as we would, and now I feel that 
it is useless to struggle with the flames which are destroy- 
ing it ; useless to try to quench them with the will. 
Is this feeling weakness or truth ? . . . 
Certainly intense suffering is a terrible egotism, and we 
cannot be so helpless in it as we seem. Surely we might 
rise and overcome it and let go, even in the midst of the 
fire. . . . We seem to be irrevocably, irresistibly driven 
— and yet it is the part of weakness and selfishness to 
lay our downfall at the feet of an almighty Fate. 

MARCH TWENTY-NINTH 

. . . With prayer comes an uplifting and an inseeing 
certainty of the divine fulfilment of the nature and true 
desire of each one as he is prepared to receive it. Noth- 
ing is lost — nothing is in vain — the temporal is part of 
the eternal, and all our longings, emotions, visions, forces, 

28 



spring from God, and return to Him, and are at rest in 
a perfedl fulfilment. 

This knowledge brings peace and even joy while the 
vision lasts. 

Oh, to hold the vision as an ever present reality, making 
heaven here within us, — to find an emotion — a force 
— a dominant idea — great enough to lift one perma- 
nently ou\ of the finite self — out of the small ego, into 
the whole world-consciousness, with its limitless life and 
power ! 

We most of us know the power and freedom that comes 
from being temporarily lifted out of ourselves by some 
intense passing need, or emotion. Forgetting our own 
limitations of body and mind, we have access to great 
fountains of strength and capacity, and could move 
mountains at such moments. 

There must be a way to live always in that state of free- 
dom and power. Some of the Saints must have found it 
— a great genius must come near to it. 
Passionate and yet wholly unselfish loves gives it ; but 
who of us yet can love passionately without taint of 
self? 

APRIL NINTH 

... I feel sure that whatever God holds for each one, 
is the best and highest for that one, and surely awaits our 
longings and our passionate outreaching. This feeling 
gives strength and peace. . . . Whatever is to be, will 
be — life and death are not in our hands — so all will 
be well whichever way it goes; and who knows that 
love cannot guide and cherish and be even closer to 
those it loves, from beyond the veil, than from this 
side. I am sure that my Mother was constantly with 
me when I was a child. I felt her presence and her love 
so intensely. 



29 



APRIL FIFTEENTH 

SO much beauty and color has come with the Easter 
flowers. Color tells me mor^ than almost anything 
of a world beyond our ken — especially color in sunlight. 
I can see and feel beauty in a more intense way than 
ever. ... If only the fire of life within me could be all 
turned straight to God, I feel that it would lift the whole 
earth nearer to Heaven. 

Another girl came for help, and the world is more inex- 
plicable every day. These women respond to Nature and 
love (for those whom I see love or have loved); they fol- 
low the very springs of their nature, born with them, 
and part of themselves ; and following its voice, they 
find themselves in antagonism to all the world — blighted, 
scoffed at and turned out — unless they hide themselves 
and deceive the world. 

APRIL SEVENTEENTH 

A FEELING that has often come to me has come 
lately with more force and clearness. A feeling 
that our true and ultimate relation with God and the 
Universe is most closely suggested when we love per- 
sons with great intensity. As yet most of us are too finite 
and limited to feel a(5lual passion for God, and the whole 
of things — we feel it only for units, and may learn 
thereby what our touch with the whole world should 
be, as we expand, and feel the ecstatic life of the whole. 
. . . Under that influence the fire of love reveals the 
divine man or woman, and brings us into touch with 
the hidden divinity. 

That is why everything about a person beloved becomes 
so strangely, deeply sacred, and we see through all out- 
ward imperfeftion into the flame of life which burns in 
all of us. It is only visible to love, and therefore lovers 
often seem mad to those who see only the outward per- 
sonality. 

30 



It is the true touch and Key to life, and though it is 
limited for us to finite points of touch, as we grow, the 
fire will expand, and we shall mingle more and more 
with all souls, in the fire and ecstasy which now we can 
only feel for one. It is the God within a human soul 
that becomes visible to us in all pure passion. It should 
lead us to see and feel God everywhere, and burn with 
love for Him as the Saints did. Then the whole world 
would become as holy, and as much to be longed for, as 
the beloved is to the lover, and we should live in free- 
dom and joy, in deep touch with all. 

APRIL TWENTY-THIRD 

SPRING knocks on one's heart and cries out to open, 
and expand and rejoice, and be one with Nature. 
And yet the path of duty may go in just the opposite 
way from the path of beauty, of poetry, of emotion and 
even the love of Nature. It may be contrary to our in- 
stin6ls, and our philosophy, and may become the deepest 
kind of asceticism. 

Why should the best part of us have to be denied along 
with the selfish part ? 

Is there a deep antagonism between what we call mor- 
ality and the realm of Art and Beauty? The lives of many 
of the world's great geniuses seem to point that way. To 
stand as interpreter between heaven and earth, and pour 
out a divine message through music, or poetry, or paint- 
ing, surely brings heaven nearer to men, and should in- 
spire the genius himself with goodness and truth. And 
yet how often the free air which he breathes is too much 
for him, as a man, and the world of morality seems to 
have no place in his broad consciousness. And how often 
too the virtuous and unselfish and upright man has no 
touch with or knowledge of the great world of beauty. 
It is a terrible part of the great paradox, and we must 
wait and grow. The ideal must be in store for us : — to 

31 



lose self, — to be simply good, and love one's neighbor 
as oneself, and yet at the same time to lose oneself in 
perfedl safety in God's great universe of Light and Love, 
and emotional Beauty of sight and sound and pure idea. 

APRIL TWENTY-FIFTH 

THOSE tw^o visions of last summer have kept com- 
ing back to me to-day: — one in which I was walk- 
ing through a round passage made all of light, going round 
and round in spirals. There was a door at the end, and 
when I reached it, a woman, or an angel, — a presence 
felt, not seen, — opened the door wide into a glory of light. 
Then the vision ceased and I was lying on the ground 
under the trees again. At another time I saw a golden 
thread, or clew, lying on the ground, I picked it up and 
held it, and saw that it mounted into the air and led 
into a blaze of light. Then again my consciousness re- 
turned to earth ; but feeling that the door was open, and 
in my hand a guide, if I could only abide my time. 

MAY FIFTH 

. . . The Pole who wrote "Without Dogma" has a 
wonderfully deep understanding of human nature. It is 
a dangerous thing, in this world, to be without dogma, 
and doubting all human standards to feel life in its great- 
ness and freedom, without limitation. One may too easily 
look so high that one overlooks duty, and falls into the 
pit. The safest, surest natures are those simple ones who 
see no problem or contradidlions, but unquestioningly 
accept certain beliefs and standards as inviolable, and 
abide by them in perfe6l trust. 

MAY TWENTY-EIGHTH 

HEREIN is the deep mystery of life. God reveals 
Himself to our hearts through poetry, beauty, 
love, intuition. The intellect cannot know Him inti- 
mately, but the soul feels Him and knows that His being 

32 



and His will are harmony, love, beauty, and that He 
manifests Himself constantly to us through our hearts. 
That is a truth of deep and real experience to many, and 
while that is all, life is simple, and the path is straight. 
But there comes another kind of experience. The indi- 
vidual must lose his will in God*s will, and God's seems 
often to teach the very opposite course from all that has 
hitherto revealed itself of His nature. That is, if a man 
follow always the poetic, the beautiful, the intuitional ; 
if the divine emotion becomes his guide, he is likely to 
find himself suddenly brought up by every law of exist- 
ence, and forced either to selfishly and egotistically pur- 
sue his own finite will — or else to turn his back on all 
that has meant revelation, light, inspiration, and enter 
the very darkness of death in trying to do the will of 
that same God whose will must be Light and Truth. 
In other words our hearts in childhood, and in happi- 
ness, reveal to us God's will as manifested in pure love, 
in heavenly beauty, in poetic inspiration, and we think 
we have found the key to life and right living. Then 
come the great experiences of life as it is here, and lo ! 
— God's will for us may mean the crucifixion of that 
very love and beauty and tenderness through which He 
has made Himself known to us. 

The pure idealism which has been my faith cannot be 
the whole truth. There must be a gospel of sorrow as well 
as a gospel of joy — both divinely willed — both work- 
ing for righteousness. Still the mystery is as great as ever 
— that we seem often to have to crucify the God within, 
in order to do God's will! 

JUNE FIRST 

FOR the first time since coming here this summer, I 
went up on the rock under the pine trees. Nature 
there seemed very tender and loving and intimate. In- 
stead of trying to learn her secrets in the old way, by 

33 



contemplation and will, trying to burn through the veil 
into the unseen, — I felt now like a weak little erring 
child going to its Mother for comfort and strength, and 
the Nature that I knew so well in that spot, took me un- 
der her arms, and I fell fast asleep in the hollow under 
the trees and woke up stronger and happier. 
One should go to her as a little child, and not as a master 
to compel her secrets, and not only as a mystic to become 
one with her life. 

Now I feel too weak and unworthy to ask her to lift me 
out and up into the universal soul of things and can only 
go humbly and accept whatever light and life the great 
Mother can give. 

SEPTEMBER SECOND (London) 

1CAN see and feel things as never before, only there 
is a great emotion and wonder in everything. 
Westminster, and the music there carried me up and out 
into the world of Spirit, and yet through all was the great 
reverence for all that men have done, and thought, and 
felt. 

To-day in the National Gallery I saw the wonder and 
beauty of painting as never before, and sat long before a 
beautiful "Adoring Angel'* of Filippino Lippi. A little 
way off was a Venus kissing Cupid, by another old Italian. 
One pidlure, the very incarnation of pure holiness and 
love of God, — the other, life here in its intoxicating ful- 
ness and joy; and a great wave of the wonder and miracle 
of life swept over me. 

I believe that these two apparently opposite emotions are 
not so far apart as the saints and ascetics would have us 
think; but life is every day a deeper mystery. 



34 



1896 

JUNE 

. . . Each deep insight brings its corresponding suffering. 

1897 
JANUARY SECOND 

. . . Life rises up strongly within me, and makes me feel 
the heart-beat of the Universe. 



35 



LETTERS 



LETTERS 

Portsmouth^ N. H., May 25, 1894. 

DEAR Harry : . . . We have had two big storms 
here, and one beautiful warm day, which made 
one expand and feel the summer. The house is set in 
gorgeous masses of lilacs and the air is fragrant with them. 
I wish you could see them as they are now. . . . 
... I will go slowly with the Symbolists, for it is always 
a shock to find oneself looking at the mud when one is 
seeking the sky; and the Symbolists seem to contain a 
strange mixture of the two. Still I am always willing 
to go through a great deal for the sake of a few glimpses 
of bright light. Always faithfully yours, 

Katharine Coolidge. 

Portsmouth, N. H., July 9, 1894. 

. . . The household has been enlarged by one of the C. 
puppies, which is much like a baby and has abundant care 
and petting. The football men arrive to-day, and the Miss 
F.'s are coming here — also Dr. B. "Peter Ibbetson" 
arrived and I am so glad that you liked it. I long for 
"Trilby." There is a mass of white lilies in the garden, 
and of red poppies. I took quite a bicycle ride to-day, and 
have learned not to rush quite so violently at the hills, 
though I still have to dismount on most of them. We 
are all tremendously interested in the strike, which has 
assumed alarming proportions. The troops have fired on 
the mob at Chicago, and the President has issued a pro- 
clamation ordering all rioters to disperse. A general strike 
of all labor unions has been ordered for Wednesday by 
the ringleaders. These are troublous times both here and 
in Europe, and my impression is that we shall all have 
to materially change our standards of living before we 
find an issue. 

I hope you will write to us. Love froi;n the children. 

39 



Portsmouth^ N. H., August 29, 1894. 
... I am charmed with "Our Lady's Tumbler." The 
simple old story is even more touching than the modern 
one, and it seems to me that Mr. Anatole France should 
have mentioned the origin — perhaps he did — I do not 
know. At any rate it is a beautiful story, and I am very 
glad to have it. . . . The summer has been more than 
usually quiet, excepting for the children, who have had a 
number of their friends here and have been as happy as 
the day is long. . . . 

I have gone through many books, worked in my garden, 
explored the woods and been rather unsociable with 
many of my kind I am afraid. . . . 
You will be glad to know that I can now go up a slight 
incline without rushing at it at furious speed, but I do 
not believe that the bicycle will ever be my pet mode 
of progressing, and I have not ridden very much. Once 
I fell off into the middle of an enormous and terribly 
scratchy bramble-bush, like the Mother Goose man, but 
happily the results were less serious. 

Boston^ January 20, 1895. 

THIS certainly expresses a modern phase of girls' 
lives, especially of the "higher education" girls — 
I mean the restless ambition to be and to do something 
by themselves, and to thus perhaps lose the simpler, more 
natural paths of life. It is rather a morbid theme I think, 
especially when mixed up with violent, girl devotions, 
but it certainly is a phase of nineteenth century life. 
Whether it is a phase worth writing about I do not feel 
sure, for the older I grow, the more I have faith in the 
good of dwelling on the noblest, truest and most sane 
aspects of life, in literature and art. Of course I do not 
mean to the exclusion of pathos and even tragedy, but 
I do mean to the exclusion of the abnormal and rather 
40 



strained phenomena of peculiar times and places. It is a 
tendency of to-day, but the best things have a universal 
touch, and would be human in any time or place. 
I did not mean to w^rite a discourse, but only try to ex- 
plain what I mean and fear it is rather obscure. I hope 
you will have a very successful time in New York. 

114 Beacon Street, O^ober 30, 1895. 

MANY thanks for the article. I wish I could get more 
out of it, but it seems to me that the writer goes no 
farther beneath the elephant and the tortoise than most 
theorists on the subjedt. The strength of motive of the 
self, didlated by reason, and the will power to aft from 
such a motive contrary to impulse, are all a part of the 
general summing up of the individual charadler, arising 
from causes in the past. The result of these causes being 
what the Eastern philosopher calls "Karma," and the 
Western man of science " Heredity." I have never found 
any metaphysical or scientific process of reasoning, which 
could possibly sanation the idea of free will. There re- 
mains the persistent feeling, common to all of us, that we 
have free will, and can choose for good or evil. A most 
difficult asped: of the all-pervading paradox, which I be- 
lieve we are as yet incapable of explaining from an in- 
telledlual point of view, although one can "see through 
a glass darkly " that both sides must be true, and there- 
fore not really contradictory. This article seems to me 
a quite superficial attempt to make the connexion and 
unity logically apparent. 

Portsmouth^ N, H., June 30, 1896. 

1LIKE your sonnet extremely. ... At first I won- 
dered what evening talk had suggested it, and then im- 
mediately remembered our comparison of our respe6live 
states of consciousness of a spirit world " behind the veil." 

41 



Sometimes I almost think it is best and most sane that 
like the baby of your sonnet we should feel only the 
warm full touch of our mother world here, full to over- 
flowing as it is with the throb of Life. But the inner 
sense of life is here with us also. " Closer it is than breath- 
ing, nearer than hands or feet " (if that is the way it 
goes) and I for one have to seek and listen and pray to 
that which informs me and created all visible life. Prob- 
ably the infant in its unconscious, unquestioning sense 
of nearness and love and comfort, is often far nearer the 
Source than the conscious seeker — and so with the child- 
like man or woman — unconsciously conscious of God ! 
if any one may use such a paradox — but each one has his 
own temperament and his own light with which to find 
his way. 

I had a dreadful time getting through the "Psychology." 
It is fine in parts and did my mind good, but I have to 
wrestle with scientific analysis, and don't believe a bit in 
his theory of the emotions. 

The children are in fine condition, and we have all had 
a full peaceful month here — gardening, reading, and 
thinking, besides all the many occupations that a big 
family brings. The children ride and swim, and have 
regularly carved, and praftised the violin respectively. 
. . . In July we are to have two large parties of "kids" 
here. ... I took Molly and Katrine to Class Day with 
the H.'s ! and we all enjoyed it. The children thought 
the tree was "great." I hope that French towns are 
" great " too, and we all send our love. 

Portsmouth, N. H., September i8, 1896. 

THANK you heartily for your kind and afFedlionate 
letter. First let me tell you how sorry I am that 
you have been ill, which I hear for the first time, and 
how glad that you are convalescent, and apparently get- 
ting the peaceful good of the situation. 
42 



About myself, I did go to a nerve and head specialist ten 
days ago, quite of my own volition, agreeing w^ith what 
you say, and seeing no fundamental fight between differ- 
ent methods while we still "see through a glass darkly." 
No antagonism ever, excepting with some of the morbid 
sides of do6loring. The result of my visit is merely that 
I am feeding up on malt and milk. There seemed to be 
nothing the matter excepting a condition of strain, caus- 
ing abnormal a(5livity, and high pressure to the whole ma- 
chine, tending naturally to wear out the body, and give 
unpleasant sensations in the head. Therefore I am try- 
ing to add a little more substance to the body, so that 
it may better contain a very galloping machine, — or the 
other way perhaps is more true — so that the machine 
may better bear a high rate of pressure from within. I 
am doing what I can, you see, from that end of things, 
and thank you for caring. ... 

Portsmouth, N. H., September 27, 1896. 

... I have been working like a day laborer in my gar- 
den, wielding a huge spade, putting in new plants, and 
changing round old ones. I have also arranged an arbor 
for climbing roses. As to lily bulbs they have an immense 
charm for me, lying in the rich brown mother earth, with 
their curious repetition of the water lily forms, and their 
potentiality for such great beauty, past and to come.* I 
shall revel in lilies next summer, of all colors, if the bulbs 
like it here and do their work. 

I quite agree with your remarks about infinity. — It is 
neither my wish nor will to hurry things in this sphere ; 
but that portion of the great life of the Universe which 
animates my special organism, seems to enjoy activity 
just now, and rages round in its human prison. No dis- 
respect to the human^ quite the contrary ; but something 

• See ''November'' in ''Foices^ 

43 



wrong with the personality, when the divine and human 
elements are not yet one. I suppose that is what we are 
here for — to make them one, even if we have to die 
daily to find it all out. 

I am about to embark upon "Rome." Not such pleas- 
ant or noble reading as "St. Francis." 

Portsmouth^ Sunday, ORober, 1896. 

WHAT you say of Santayana and his book is inter- 
esting. He must be an unusual product of this 
age, and I am glad of his Idealism ; but if his calm and 
passionateness are of the kind that know and recognize 
nothing else, then one can only admire them from afar 
— and wonder. The calm which knows storm is sublime. 
Yes, Du Maurier leaves a void in one's heart — and a feel- 
ing of joy also, as of something undying. I think the great 
charm of his writing and personality is the intensity of 
his warm, human sympathy, all interfused as it is with 
the breath of the beyond. But of what use is it to try and 
define charm ! All the really vital things in the world defy 
analysis. ... 

Boston, January, 1897. 

. . . How goes the writing and New York life gener- 
ally ? I have been trying my hand again. I keep having 
ideas for poems which quite impress me in their abstrac- 
tion, but when it comes to putting them into form and 
expression, my genius seems to flag. 

Boston, February 2, 1897. 

THE legend of "Th6ophile" is very charmingly 
told, and it is an enchanting legend. You have 
entered into the spirit of it in the telling, and as one reads 
it one knows that it is reAlyfelt, 
Yes, Minna's death is terribly incomprehensible from 
44 



the present standpoint, and so are many, many things. 
Dr. C. looks at it from one side when he says that such 
things drive us to live and learn and work, and that it 
is as much or as little God ordained as the ignorance that 
permitted the plague. Perhaps there is a still larger view 
which is very difficult to put into words, in which all 
history, all life, and the thread of every single individual 
life is like — what shall I say ? — a great tapestry slowly 
unrolled through what we call time, and every single 
thread is in its place in history — in environment — in 
conditions of knowledge and light — in just the one place 
in all that wonderful tapestry where that particular thread 
had to be; — the plague — and the ignorance and its vic- 
tims belonged together — why we cannot yet see — and 
so the present tragedies and their victims belong together 
— so with the joys and the losses and all that makes life. 

Came to the Rose the Answer of the Lord : 
"Sister, before We smote the dark in twain, 
Ere yet the stars saw one another plain, 
Time, tide, and space. We bound unto the task 
That thou shouldst fall, and such an one should ask." 

^'' An Answer J ^ Kipling. 

Pure fatalism perhaps you say, but to me God and Fate 
are one, and into the tapestry is woven the necessity 
of valiant, unceasing human adlion — choice, will, all 
pushing on the unrolling and unfolding of human life 
towards an infinite beauty and purpose, which every 
thread's rapture, and every thread's tragedy, serves. . . . 

Boston, February 24, 1 897. 

IS the charm and the poetry really so cold, or is it 
merely unawakened, or temperamentally hidden ? 
Where there is so much tenderness and "artistic melan- 
choly " as you describe, it seems to me that there must be 
an inward fire to produce it, although it may burn so far 

45 



within, that its heat is not perceptible until some great 
experience breaks the enclosing walls. Of course I am 
theorizing as far as any special personality goes, and know 
that some people are by nature incapable of those great 
earthquakes that bring everything to the surface through 
the broken crust ; but when I see an outward poem, I 
always believe in an inward force expressing it. 
Mr. Savage sent me his poems (published). They show 
an immense and close love of nature and a very beautiful 
feeling about things, but at the same time rather a lack 
of the sense of poetry in itself, it seems to me. They 
make one like the man, without admiring the artist. This 
is merely an impression. I bought Mr. Santayana's poems 
yesterday and have read a few. They are poetry and far 
more emotional than I supposed. I love the few that I 
have read. 

We are all well. Molly has had no further balls, but is 
kindly disposed towards them. 

To G. O. W. Boston, Spring, 1897. 

MY Dear : Your letter is a great comfort and help 
to me, and I feel deep gratitude for God*s great 
gift of a new friend in the true and vital sense. Some- 
times I feel that long struggling has so changed me, that 
I can neither give nor receive the water of life, in my 
touch with others, for the time. The faith that by the 
road of pain, that power would some day return in fuller 
measure than ever before, has never left me, and now to 
have you come to me with that feeling of the inner touch 
which is so precious, is a sign of hope and promise that 
gives new courage. My love to you, dear. 

K. C. 



D 



Portsmouth, N, H., July 13, 1897. 
EAR Harry : . . . I unexpectedly passed Sunday 
with Mrs. W., and found there Mrs. B. L., Mr. 
46 



William James, and Jack Chapman with Vidor, who 
is a dear. Moreover we teaed with Mrs. Fields and Miss 
Jewett, and I returned to this primitive colony soaked 
in erudition ! Never in my life have I heard so much 
literary talk condensed into twenty-four hours, and Jack 
Chapman saying all the time that this or that writer was 
no good. He is fine and vigorous, and even his icono- 
clast ideas ring true, to a great extent. , . . 
Love to all and the best of luck to the play. AfFe6tion- 
ately yours, 

Katharine Coolidge. 

P. S. Mr. Pourtau, the clarionet player, and his wife and 
belle-mere are coming to our empty cottage after all. 
When he practises his clarionet, Katrine her violin, and 
Louise her piano, the air will be so filled with sweet 
sound, that I expeft to inhabit the deep woods, and listen 
to the voice of the hermit thrush ! 

Portsmouth^ N. H., August 14, 1897. 

YOUR "Gerard" is very musical and attra6live. 
Thank you for sending it. I return the compli- 
ment below, with a sonnet.* . . . Yesterday, — noon, 
sunset, and night, were as beautiful, in the sunlight, twi- 
light, and moonlight, as any day and night that I can 
remember ; but I shall not attempt a word pidlure. . . . 
Six children left here yesterday, and you can imagine the 
void ! Molly and Katrine went to Newport for a week. 
The visit herewas very happy and successful, and the play 
was really good and most attradtive. They all did their 
best, and it went perfeftly smoothly, making a series of 
very pretty pidlures in the semi-circular wood space, and 
carrying along the interest strongly. We arranged board 
seats, on wooden horses, covered with rugs and things, 

* ''Color'' (in ''Voices''). 

47 



and had about fifty people who trooped through the nar- 
row path, including Mrs. N. . . . She was very expres- 
sive, but in her heart of hearts I think she was puzzled 
to give it a place in her mental category of events, Mrs. 
W. came and was very enthusiastic. Jack came out with 
quite unexpe6led dramatic power! and Sue as the Prince 
was fine. . . . 

The Pourtaus have come, and M. and Mme. went fishing 
the other day for the first time, and having half filled the 
boat with sculpins, rejoiced at having secured "de quoi 
avoir un bon souper." M. Pourtau is a remarkably nice 
man, and entirely absorbed in his painting during the few 
months when he is free from orchestra work. 
The children and their four visitors rode, and swam and 
rowed, and picnicked and were generally jolly, and the 
three children left, together with the two H.'s, seem like 
the smallest and quietest of families. The older three girls 
come to stay on the twenty-fifth. 

Boston, OBober 20, 1897. 

. . . The girls' Indian play was really very spirited and 
pi<5luresque. A rolling field and a pine wood — a rough 
encampment — feathers and war paint — lots of ponies, 
and the bright sun over all, made an unusual scene. The 
barebacked riding was worthy of Buffalo Bill, and the 
acting is better with each new enterprise. 

Boston, November 29, 1897. 

SATURDAY the "Farmers" played a grand match 
of basket ball at Brookline against the "Smart Set," 
both teams going out on the eledlric cars in short skirts 
and sweaters with letters sewed on the front. ... I gath- 
ered all my poetic effrisions together the other day, and 
handed them over to be type-written at the Library, 
merely for my own satisfaction, as one sees them better 

48 



I think that way. I am afraid that most of them "won't 
wash." 

To G. O. W. 

THE pure white and deep red roses are a great joy, 
dear, and I thank you for them. I cannot see my 
way very well, to lunching with you on Friday, as this 
week is very full, and that day especially is a difficult one 
for lunching out. I am sorry, for I should have liked to 
have again the pleasure of last Thursday, but shall see 
you soon at any rate. 

No ... it would be better were I more inclined to make 
sacrifices. The storms that I have met arise primarily 
in myself, from the contradictory elements in my own 
nature. The Epidletus is strong and beautiful. 
I do feel your loving, helpful hand reached out to me, 
and be sure that I shall take it very constantly. 
With love to you, yours, 

K. C. 

114 Beacon Street, Monday, February 24, 1898. 

DEAR Harry : . . . I believe that a strongly emo- 
tional nature when combined with an intelledhial 
one, has a force which the more primitive emotion knows 
nothing of. In other words that it is the intelledlual na- 
ture (not all of them) which really knows what the ter- 
rific force of emotion is. I have suffered so from the com- 
bination in my own temperament that I know but too 
well how to sympathize with it in others ; but in spite of 
the pain of it, who would give up the capacity for intense 
emotion ? It holds the greatest joy as well as the greatest 
pain, and when it is pure and high enough it is vision and 
touch with the soul of things beyond the world of limi- 
tations. It is not always easy to keep it in the highest 
regions and make it serve the ideal, but when we can, we 
have a power in our grasp for good — infinitely deeper 

49 



and greater I am sure than any solely intelledlual force. 
I do not know whether this is vague or simple — I feel it 
so much that I cannot tell. At any rate, if I can ever help 
you in any way I shall be more than glad. Affectionately 
yours, 

Katharine Coolidge. 

114 Beacon Street; Saturday, March 19, 1898. 

GRETCHEN DEAR : When I went into the Si- 
lence this morning, as I always try to do before 
beginning the day's work, I found you there, and sent 
up a prayer for your highest good. Perhaps that was why 
you found me there too, dear, and I feel that we shall 
always find one another so, — and also, I trust, in this 
warm and beautiful world where a hand-clasp means so 
much. 

These flowers carry this message and my abiding love 
to you on your birthday. I am so glad it is such a happy 
one, Gretchen. 

Katie. 



I 



Boston, Spring, 1898. 

CAME home just now after a rather weary search 
for some of life's accessories, and was refreshed and 
comforted by your lovely branch of orchids in its dear 
little shining vase. They immediately found their way 
to my desk, where I only keep especially cherished trea- 
sures. I love to see them there : I have a sense of incom- 
pleteness without a flower there to look at as I work. 

Boston, April z^, 1898. 

DEAREST Edith : It was a delight to hear from 
you and I strongly agree with you that we must 
not let such long stretches of time go by without hear- 
ing from each other. I am so much interested in your 
50 



book. Do write and tell me more about it, and what you 
mean to' do with it. Be sure to write me about it, dear 
Edith. 

My family is well and growing apace. Molly is studying 
for her RadclifFe preliminary exams this spring, though 
she does not mean to go to college. Katrine is taking 
violin lessons of Mr. Loeffler, whom you may remember 
as rather the best musician in the Symphony Orchestra. 
His standard is very high, and it is a splendid training. 
We all went to the Artists* Festival this week : — a cos- 
tume pageant of Gothic times. M. was Joan of Arc 
and K. her little trumpeter, and Jack was a page. The 
Tavern Club men all went as Crusaders, and were most 
impressive. So you see the world amuses itself in spite of 
the war cloud that hangs over us, — a terrible and seem- 
ingly unnecessary war ; but now that it is inevitable, I 
trust we may strike hard in order to end it soon. 
I have been writing somewhat all winter in spite of a bad 
head, which has suddenly grown so much better lately 
that I have faith that it means a turn towards greater 
freedom. 

Two things rather puzzle me (a million things rather, 
but these two are personal, and I happened to think of 
them) — one is that when I felt free and well compara- 
tively, I was not compelled to seek expression — and when 
obstacles make it difficult — I am almost forced to fight 
the obstacles and find some medium for expression, how- 
ever inadequate. The other is that having always dis- 
liked form in every walk of life, and found it very diffi- 
cult to master or even meet — I now can do very much 
better work in the very formal form of the sonnet, than 
in any other freer medium. 

I long to do something on a large scale, but my efforts 
are very primitive, and I am continually attradled back 
to the sonnet as a medium. The "Atlantic Monthly" is 
going to publish one called " Night," which I enclose. 

51 



Thank you dear Edith, for thinking of me on Easter in 
St. Peter's. I love to have you think of me so. Your love 
is one of the deep, real things in my life w^hich I am sure 
will abide. 

My w^inter has been full, and yet quiet, with but little 
in the society way ; much time given to the children, a 
good deal to the young unmarried mothers who some- 
times come to me for help through a bad time, and the 
usual calls of every-day life. 

I have seen Mrs. S. very often. She still works hard at her 
painting and was much inspired by Miss Cassatt, who 
spent several weeks here, and was most decided in her 
views of Art. Also Mrs. W. is always near and dear. 
My love to your Mother always. — You will write, will 
you not, dear, and tell me all you can of yourself and your 
work. Yours always 

Katharine Coolidge. 

Portsmouth, N. H., June 9, 1898. 

DEAR Harry : ... It is most beautiful here as 
with you. I passed three rainy days in settling the 
house from top to bottom, and the fourth day being 
sunny, grubbed in my garden from breakfast to tea. 
. . . To my surprise " Harper's Weekly " sent me ^15.00 
for the "Stokers" ! I don't like it enough to be particu- 
larly pleased. I shall look forward so much to whatever 
of your own you send me, and will do likewise when I 
write again. I have neither thought nor felt in that way 
lately. It seems miles away from my consciousness. I 
have a feeling which brings promise, and is at the same 
time quite maddening, of a force in that diredlion, bottled 
up in me and making a rumpus because some barrier in 
my head, or state of mind, or something binds it in. I sup- 
pose this seems, from your point of view, very hopeless 
in a woman of my age, who ought to have said part of 
her say long ago if she were going to ! But I do not feel 
52 



it hopeless fortunately, for it is so very vital and lively, 
if I can but hew a passage for it. It is only the stagnant 
people who stop growing early. I mean to change and 
grow and live hard till I am ninety, or whatever span 
may be my lot ! and perhaps by that time the power 
which I feel in a deep and inscrutable way, may find a 
path to the outer light, — or perhaps only Death will 
set it free, which would n't be very useful for this sphere ! 
I am sure I don't know why I meander thus about my 
own incapacities, but I get quite mad sometimes because 
this big thing that I feel won't materialize in a beau- 
tiful form, either in life or in artistic expression. 
My best wishes to the "den" and to "Theophile" 
and all the rest — I am so glad of the book prospe<5l. 
Again, my love to your mother. From, yours afFe6lion- 
ately, 

K. C. 

Harvard, Thursday, June i6, 1898. 

MANY thanks for these interesting letters, and es- 
pecially for your own. I have been having many 
peaceful resting days, with the woods and lake, and have 
enjoyed Gretchen so much. ... I have important irons 
on the fire in Boston (a woman with a child to be looked 
after, etc.) and go up to-morrow until Saturday p. m., 
though being madly homesick for the children I can 
hardly wait, but have to be in town Saturday. Molly and 
some friends are going down for Sunday, and I shall be 
there then. . . . 

I look longingly across the hills at your splendid old Mo- 
nadnock, and think what a foolish thing space is any- 
way. It seems to be very easy to skip through it, drop- 
ping one's cumbersome shell behind. 
My love to you alL I will write and tell you whether I 
manage to stay at home. I have an attraction for foxes, 
having encountered one here three times, at close quar- 

53 



ters, twice alone and once with the assembled family, 
who had never seen one before in these woods. 

Portsmouth, N. H., June 22, 1898. 

DEAR, DEAR Gretchen : A letter like yours is al- 
ready answered in the spirit as one reads, and feels, 
and sends forth the message of love and sympathy ; but 
I do not want the night to come before I also answer in 
some degree, in tangible form, as well as in spirit. It is 
rather strange that you should have said what you did 
just then about the river of Destiny flowing by, for a few 
minutes before your letter came, I had been sitting in 
the sun by my garden, and it seemed as if the future drew 
near enough to let me hear approaching footsteps, — peo- 
ple and events, and associations yet to come, marching as 
if marshalled by Fate, and drawing nearer and nearer 
to the present. I do not mean that I had any clear pro- 
phetic vision of what those footsteps were, but somewhat 
the feeling that you describe of waiting for and welcom- 
ing the inevitable procession of lives and loves, and lights 
and shadows, heralded through the arches of time by Des- 
tiny, superb in its changeless yet ever changing power. 
I should like to find a poetic form to express the emo- 
tion of those approaching, steady steps. And as I tried 
to say to you, I think as we keep meeting the future, 
touching it as the present, and then possessing it as the 
past, one learns to decipher in some measure the inter- 
woven hieroglyphics that run through all without a break, 
gradually revealing the mystery of life, and of our indi- 
vidual lives. 

. . . All that you tell me of yourself, and your own steps, 
past and present, in this wonderful flow of destiny links 
me yet closer to you, and I shall be happy and grateful if 
I can ever serve you in the deep places. We have already 
helped each other much I know, and know that you feel 
it too. 

54 



Yes, I believe that the highest, purest joy comes of re- 
linquishment. " He who loseth his life — ." To cease hunt- 
ing for personal happiness, and to follow passionately the 
divine ideal, — that is life in the high places, I am afraid 
that my heart's desires and my spirit's needs are sadly 
and madly tangled together, and the untangling which 
life brings is a rending process. Better so a thousand times, 
than to go through this world without being purified by 
storm and stress. 

And now good-night, dear, and may you be blessed in all 
your ways. 

K. C. 

Portsmouth, N. H., June 27, 1898. 

DEAR Harry : Many thanks for the very pidlu- 
resque account of the veteran parrot, and his 
pointed observations ! The last from Santiago is terribly 
real, is it not ? and brings it home to one, and how tre- 
mendously it appeals to the imagination too : the hot j un- 
gle growth, the tropical oleanders, and tangled overhang- 
ing vines, the ambushed Spaniards, and our men and the 
Cubans advancing through it all with the two fleets ly- 
ing outside. — Gracious, what a subjedl for pen or brush 
wielded by a blood-stirred imagination ! Yet not new in 
all ways either in history, excepting that these men are 
our own sons and brothers, and it is all being adled and 
lived in the present moment. . . . Affectionately yours, 

Katharine Coolidge. 



SONG OF THE BATTLE-SHIP STOKERS: "Har- 
per's Weekly," July 9, 1898 

E A VE on the coal, to win the goal 
Of a blasting ocean war ! 
By pits of hell stand sentinel, 
As the deadly cannon roar. 

55 



H 



The engines beat in blanching heat ; 

Our battle-ship ploughs her course ; 
Up there they fight in cool daylight, 

While we feed the monster's force. 

Over the sea, our battery 

Will lay waste the upper world ; 
And far from fame we feed the flame. 

As the bursting bombs are hurled. 
We cannot know the ebb and flow 

Of the battle's rushing tide ; 
But hear the boom of unknown doom 

Where the thundering war-ships ride. 

Each moment passed may be our last, 

For the crashing bomb-shells fly, 
And fires of fate reverberate 

In the wide, smoke-laden sky. 
In lurid night we feed the fight, 

As the belching cannon roar. 
Heave on the coal, to win the goal 

Of our country's ocean war! 



Portsmouth, N. H., Sunday, June, 1898. 

. . . Choose your own time and drop me a line, or drop 
down here without a line. You will always find a hearty 
welcome from us all. Molly and Esther H. are out sailing 
in the rain, in remarkable attire, topped by rubber fisher- 
man's hats. Molly's last RadclifFe examination ends at 
6 p. M. on July second, and then she will come home to 
stay, to my great joy. 

My garden is overflowing with roses, and big red pop- 
pies, and blue irises. 

S6 



Portsmouth, N. H., June 30, 1898. 

DEAREST Gretchen: Day before yesterday I 
went up to the H.'s for a night to see Molly j ust be- 
fore her examinations, and also to do some town drudgery, 
and on my way to the train I got your precious box and 
slipped it into my bag with a delightful sense of some- 
thing bright and dear to carry with me in the dusty paths 
of travel and errands. . . . You must never hesitate to tell 
me the tangled side of material existence. A true, deep 
friendship should bring people together, not only on the 
mountain tops, but in the labyrinthine, rocky valleys too, 
where the touch of a warm, human hand is such an in- 
finite help sometimes. I think we spoke of feeling how 
absolutely the life of the spirit should permeate and vi- 
brate through all the smallest (and sometimes seemingly 
the meanest) things of daily existence, and so nothing 
is too small or too every-day, to be brought where love 
is. Please remember this, dear, if I can help to clear any 
puzzlement. Not that I am much good in practical mat- 
ters, being but a shiftless dreamer in some ways ! But I 
think just the expression of one's worries is a help often. 
... I have tried to express in poetry the March of the 
Fate idea, and most inadequate as it is, I will copy and 
send it to you. 

Good-bye, Gretchen — We are very close together in 
spite of the miles between. Yours always, 

K. C. 

FATE (from "Voices") 

1HEAR the tread of approaching feet ; 
The marching step of an ordered Fate 
Advancing under the arch of Time. 
I stand and wait ; there is no retreat ; 
The Future opens her shadowy gate ; 
Her armies pass on a quest sublime. 

57 



The rhythmic tread, like a surging sea, 
Comes nearer under the echoing arch ; 
I see the gleam of a herald light, 
And feel the touch of a prophecy ; 
While Fate bears on in the steadfast march 
A new decree from the Infinite. 

What comes to me from the Future's gate 
Is mine by right of the will of God ; 
Is mine in Life, and is mine in Death ! 
I wait the word from the hosts of Fate, 
Ere6l in ways where the Past hath trod, 
Serene and still in the might of faith. 

Portsmouth, N. //., Ju/y 5, 1898. 

YOUR letter was a very sweet and wonderful one 
to me. I am so glad, so glad, that you stand with so 
much light around and within you. On the edge of that 
ever broadening river of Maternity one should wait on 
one's knees, with uplifted eyes — lifted above the shadows 
cast by the material conditions, into the light of fulfil- 
ment. What you say of being enfolded yourself, instead 
of enfolding, is deeply true. Dear Gretchen, may God 
bless you and yours. . . . 

" Beyond the river that has no bridge ! " What a splendid 
saying, — and yes, a thousand times I have felt as if I were 
touching a revelation of God, and reached passionately 
through a dim veil, or across that river that has no bridge, 
to grasp and have it. The veil seems so impalpable, the 
river so easy to cross — and yet the revelation will not 
be quite brought across the line of vision, through the 
shadows of one's heart. Some day it will, and then there 
will be greater revelations, and other rivers — always be- 
yond and beyond — as we would have it. 
Good-night and constant, deep love. 

58 



I 



Portsmouth, N. H., Wednesday, July 20, 1898. 

RAN up to Dublin rather unexpedledly, for Harry's 
play, which was most successful. I found your dear 
letter here last evening. . . . 

I have been thinking of you so much, dear, that the 
thoughts of love you speak of, and the beautiful " Plo- 
tinus" must have found their way in some form through 
the enfolding ethereal light that makes us all touch each 
other, when we enter it with love in our hearts. 
Had I known you were in town yesterday I might have 
seen you for a minute, as I had time to spare between 
trains, and Katrine and I beguiled away an hour in the 
inspiring atmosphere of "Keith's"! Not quite so poetic 
as the little open air theatre at Dublin, from which we 
had just come. 

I must write several necessary notes for the mail carrier, 
shortly due, so good-bye for this time, Gretchen. Don't 
get too tired in hot Boston. 
My love to you always. 

Portsmouth, N. H., Thursday, July, 1898. 

DEAR Harry : . . . I returned to a wonderful 
bloom of the late kind of pure white lilies, and of 
delicately tinted Shirley poppies, and have been working 
among them, inspired by the arranged beauty of the Dub- 
lin garden, compared to the tangled wilderness of mine. 
Our love to you all. Affedlionately yours, 

K. C. 

Portsmouth, N. H., July 27, 1898. 

MY DEAR Gretchen : The children's plans for 
parties of their friends who come here every sum- 
mer are now fixed, and the house will overflow with 
girls from August twenty-second to September tenth. 
When would you like to come ? . . . 

59 



How are you, dear, and how goes the world with you ? 
There seems to be a kind of veil over my brain just now, 
and I find it impossible to write, or even to read with 
any interest ; but I eat in a wonderful manner, and work 
in the garden, so I imagine that I am going through a 
foundation process of building up during which my brain 
is somewhat torpid. I shall be glad when it wakes up 
again to full capacity for work, for I hate the feeling of 
being in a mental mist. The white lilies and tali Bride 
poppies are beautiful in my garden now. 
My constant love to you, Gretchen. From 

Katie. 

Portsmouth, N. //., August 9, 1898. 

DEAR Harry : Clara R. is here now and she and 
Molly have sailed off to photograph the Spanish 
prisoners, who are most hilarious in their stockade. Mrs. 
R. comes to-morrow for a day or two only, Molly has 
but just developed her plates, and "Theophile" looks 
well in several — also the ferocious dragon with yawning 
jaws ! I have worked over "Dreams" and among other 
things changed the absurdity of "water's wonder/and / " 
which dawned upon my clouded consciousness. I enclose 
a very slight effort about " Queen Anne's Lace." Does 
it grow in Dublin ? Some people call it "Wild Carrot" ! 
but the first name seemed to fit more poetically. "Th6- 
ophile" himself wrote me a quite enchanting note about 
"Night." AfFedionately yours, j^ q 

QUEEN ANNE'S LACE (from "Voices") 

BORDERING the solitary upland path, 
In dreamy season of the after-math. 
With tender, traceried white; 
The fairy loveliness of Queen Anne's Lace 
Floods the broad meadow with phantasmal grace, 
Like silvery soft moonlight. 
60 



The clustering, pearly flowers are delicate 
As dawn, and every bud, tipped roseate, 

Is set in emerald mist. 
Enthroned amid the lightly circling spray, 
Gleams a dark jewel- flower in rich array 

Of queenly amethyst. 

Like airy sylphs winged low above the green, 
Their myriad figures float in shadowy sheen, 

An apparition band, — 
Float veiled in white, beneath the fleecy sky, 
Shimmering with far reflected mystery 

Of unseen Wonderland. 

Portsmouth^ August 15, 1898. 

DEAREST Gretchen : . . . I am so glad, dear, that 
your summer is peaceful within, in spite of all the 
work you have to do, and am glad too that life is not in 
a strenuous period with you, but rather in one of reaping 
the fruits of strenuousness, and preparing the ground for 
yet fuller harvests. The human creature needs these 
stretches of comparatively quiet scenery, and cannot live 
unbrokenly in the most vivid color and emotion, without 
growing either threadbare or unbalanced, according to the 
temperament. 

I have been writing a little — a very little — and living 
considerably. I sometimes think that the artistic expres- 
sion of life and emotion has to come in the periods of 
calm, of which you speak, and not in the stress of things. 
White heat there should be, as the emotion is moulded 
into form ; but perhaps not the heat of present stress, so 
much as that of memory and imagination, brought into 
the still places of the soul, and there springing into visible 
shape. 
My constant love to you^ dear. 

Katie. 
61 



September i, 1898. 

DEAR Harry: I don't know how it was that I 
did not write about your "P^rigueux," which 
has much beauty I think. The subject is almost too local 
for a sonnet, according to my ideas of what a sonnet 
should be : — something that either by the expression of 
a subjective but universal motion or a description that 
touches a universally felt chord, should be very big, and 
very essential, despite its narrow dimensions — perhaps 
because of them. . . . Evelyn Innes says that the more 
subjective is art the more universal it is. I wonder if that 
is true — . . . 

Molly's crowd left to-day after a lively visit, and Ka- 
trine's contemporaries are arriving to-day. The C.'s had 
some Spanish officers to lunch the other day — very nice 
men ; the chaplain and doctor of the Vizcaya and a 
lieutenant of the Cristobal Colon. They talked a little 
French, and on the freedom of the tennis ground it 
sounded oddly to hear them say that they were abso- 
lutely forbidden to go out in boats, or to cross into 
Maine. They said it was only by the grace of God that 
their sanity had survived the horrors they had been 
through; and one said — "You have both money and 
brains; we have neither." I wish people took more no- 
tice of the Czar's proposal. It seems to me a great, 
epoch-making move, coming from him, and I do hope 
there will be enough response and a6tion. Are you go- 
ing to the Berkshire Hills soon ! Good luck to the por- 
trait. AfFedtionately yours, 

K. C. 

Portsmouth, N. //., September 20, 1898. 

, . . SufFeringand joy both give insight and sympathy. . . . 
I speak of this apparently so gratuitously because out of 
it all, and in it all, I feel a new-born power to touch the 
62 



world and people whom I love ; and to do and to be j 
yet this power, new-born, is still in bondage, and I can- 
not break the spell. . . . Some day I shall, God willing 
— and I say this to show you — if I may — that I have 
sounded strange depths in my own life, and can, I believe, 
understand new depths in yours, with loving sympathy. 
No, I have never felt just what you describe of the mys- 
tic's world. It comes to us differently visualized, but I 
have had many wonderful looks through the veil at the 
beauty and marvel beyond, and shall be glad when it is 
time to enter that white shining Invisible. 
It strikes me that I am mournful, not to say lackadai- 
sical ! I am exercising all day, digging and rearranging 
the garden, but it does not seem to make any difference 
to my head. When it is ready it will improve. Sophy and 
Sue must have arrived. Do you see much of them and Joe, 
and what of the Dublin world ? Write soon, dear friend. 



Portsmouth^ N. H., September 28, 1898. 

YOUR letter came to me from the deep currents of 
life where we are all being borne together, on un- 
fethomed streams, to unknown bourns. My sympathy 
and love go out to you in this wonderful voyage of life 
and emotion. It is better to sound the depths, even if it 
mean suffering as well as joy. . . . 
Your letter made me see and feel the great pulses of life, 
because it was so real and meant so much. I looked on 
through great arches and saw infinite possibilities for 
the human soul that realizes itself through living and 
loving, and so coming to know life and love in their 
splendor. The way may lead through strange depths of 
darkness sometimes, but what matter ! . . . 
The real things are not subje6l to moods, and can lift 
us high above ourselves I know — when we understand. 
Should the spirit move you at any time, come across the 

63 



country to us here, and rest in this peaceful place. I 

should love to have you. , . , 

God be with you, dear friend, in all things. 

Portsmouth, N. H., Thursday, 
To G. O. W. September, 1898. 

DEAREST Child : I almost cried in reading your 
letter — its w^ords were so heartfelt and deep — 
and the great mystery and wonder of Life is so near to 
you. Every word you said found an echo in my heart's 
yearning and emotion — tho' sometimes, I am ashamed 
to say, my own infinitesimal share of the world's pain 
has so crushed me that I could not feel strong to take 
more — But that passes and is cowardly, and one's own 
pain in the end makes one able to lift larger suffering. 
Once when I was very ill the whole world of woman's 
pain in the mystery of travail and birth seemed suddenly 
to open itself out in all its depth, making me one with 
the world in an inexpressible way, and giving me a won- 
derful desire to lift the darkness. And what is that^kind 
of suffering compared to heart's pain ! 
The pathetic postscript of your letter made me laugh, 
dear Gretchen. Those two offending men were not in- 
vited to entertain you ! and I devoutly hoped that they 
would not choose your time. They were accidentals, and 
one — Philip Savage — comes to-night, and the other not 
at all, so all is well. I am so, so glad, dear, that you are 
coming. With constant love, dear, yours. 

K. C. 
Take good care of yourself. 

Boston, Saturday, OSiober 8, 1898. 

THIS rather dismal morning, dear Harry, I feel in- 
clined to write to you, having just disposed of a 
stupid fit of the blues — I do not mean to let them in 

64 



any more. When I can find my way into the big ever 
present Silence, the blues have to sneak out, like the mean 
things they are. . . . 

I have just taken the summer's produ6l of w^riting (a very 
meagre one) to a type-writer, and should like to hand it 
over to you, to be judged very severely, I am sure, for 
I have not been in good writing trim, though I think I 
have absorbed much that might take shape later. The in- 
verted EGO jumps out at me from my things and makes 
me quite sick. I want to do something quite different — 
still subjeftive perhaps, but not so in form and expres- 
sion. A subjedl is shadowy in my mind. I wish I under- 
stood blank verse. There is something elusive about it 
to me ; perhaps you can help me to feel it more clearly. 
I am reading "The Ring and the Book" and love the 
verse of it, rough and uncouth as it is. It is so strong and 
dramatic, and it is surprising after all to see how much 
attention he pays to mere sound in the putting together 
of words. . . . 

It has been wonderfully beautiful here these last days, and 
I have been drinking deep of the strength of sky and 
woods — and the sweet brown mother earth too in the 
garden, now full of new bulbs and plants j but it is ter- 
ribly lonely with Molly and Katrine and Louise all gone 
at one swoop. They went up in the train with Barrett 
last Tuesday, and I hope he enjoyed himself: — they had 
two bird cages, one fiddle, two cameras, one basket of 
flowers, and one squealing Maltese kitten ! I hope Bar- 
rett's le£lure did not suffer. . . . Ever affectionately yours, 

K. C. 

Autumn^ 1898. 114 Beacon Street. 

GRETCHEN DEAR : . . . Your love is a great gift 
in this world, where in the deep sense, love is all. 
You saw truly I think, as you lay half asleep and saw me, 
for I have had lonely and dark moments here in town ; 

65 



but, dear Gretchen, what you say is true : — that it is un- 
worthy and cowardly and unfaithful to God to remain 
cast down. There has been work in abundance, and joy 
too, and a deepening sense of the comparative unimpor- 
tance and unreality of time-bound pain and longing: — 
and the splendid reality of our true life that goes stead- 
fastly on in the light that can never die, nor even wane. . . . 
Good-night, dear child. Always your loving 

Katie. 

1898. 

YOUR wonderful red lilies have given me such joy. 
They are fresh and strong and beautiful, and bring 
your love to me by still another channel, and we can never 
open enough channels for love in this world, can we ? My 
dear, I want to see you so much. I wish that I could ex- 
press to you the way I feel about you and life. 
All this struggle and the suffering from my head seems 
to shut me off from touch, and yet to open depths of 
power to touch. That makes it the harder to have to 
fight on ; and yet gives a great hope that out of chaos 
will come light — and a far greater love. I long to put 
forth the strength that I feel surging in me, and yet surg- 
ing against brazen barriers. 

It seems strange to me that before I had any such trouble, 
I did not do more — love more — live more; — and yet 
I know that the added Power is new born of suffering, and 
still in bonds. Do you understand a little, dear ? . . . I long 
to be more to you as I trust I can some day. 

To H. W. Boston, December 15, 1898. 

. . . My great desire now is to make faith, not only an 
anchor, but a daily living power to fill every smallest 
a6l, and sweep away all waves of discouragement. That 
would be something to attain, and I have a long road 
to go. 

66 



TO A. W. S. (with a stand for a crystal) 

ICO ME to thee across the sea 
To hold thy starry crystal to the light, 
That mirrored clear within its sphere, 
Refledled wonder-worlds may greet thy sight. 

And from the dream of things that seem, 
Thine eyes shall open to a lambent flame 
Flashed from afar by some deep star 
Born of the ether whence all spirits came. 

Mirrored for thee its mystery, 

So swiftly visioned from the invisible, 

By magic might of crystal light 

Shall fill the chamber where thy fancies dwell. 

And here stand I to hold it high : 
What greater service could thy heart require 
Than to lift here a crystal sphere 
Where shines one spark of an ethereal fire ! 
Christmas, 1898. 

Boston, January 16, 1899. 

DEAREST Edith : Glad was I to see your hand- 
writing, for I had wondered and wondered why 
you had not written, and many thoughts have gone to you 
across the waters. Now you tell me that you have been 
hovering in the shadow-land between Life and Death. 
I will not say that I am sorry, for you tell me not to pity 
you, but I wish we might talk together, and that I might 
know in what form a new revelation came to you, when 
you seemed to near the other side. . . . 
I have looked, too, on the face of Death, not only in past 
sickness, but also as revealed by suffering and longing, 
and when one has seen unspeakable beauty in that face. 
Life, too, looks at one through different eyes. 
I am far better than I was. The light which I sought 

67 



in darkness and saw only on occasional mountain tops, 
begins to brighten the common way. There are plenty 
of clouds still, but everything is different, and I feel that 
the constant seeking has brought an answer of strength 
and help and guidance from higher worlds. I still stumble 
and grope, but the light answers, and what can one ask 
more ? 

My tormenting head is about well. 
The grown and growing children take more and more 
of my life, as their interests widen out in many direc- 
tions ; but I am writing constantly, and trying to break 
through the veil of material limitations which prevents 
full expression. 

I sent you this summer, I think, a sonnet published in 
the "Atlantic Monthly." Probably you were ill then. I 
am somewhat ancient for the acquirement of the art of 
poetry ! but I peg away, and occasionally produce some- 
thing that seems worth while. 

Mrs. S. and I have grown to be very near and dear friends 
and I see her more constantly than any one outside of my 
household, though there are several others with whom 
I am in close touch, 

I always think of you, dear Edith, as one of those who 
come very close with that inner touch that knows and 
feels. When you are stronger do write me again, very 
soon, and tell me of your life and yourself; and where 
is the book that you were writing when you last wrote 
to me ? 

T. is busy with many art committees, etc. It is Molly's 
last year at school, and after that I hope she will study 
seriously for her drawing and wood carving. She has 
written several quite charming plays, which she and her 
friends have adled, — one of them in the Christmas holi- 
days for a big club of poor boys who enjoyed it hugely. 
My constant love goes to you, Edith, and may this find 
you much nearer to health and strength. 
68 



Give my love to your Mother — and be sure to write soon 
to your loving 

Katharine Coolidge. 

114 Beacon Street, January 24, 1899. 

DEAR Harry : . . . I bearded Mr. Page in his den 
to-day and gave him some verses vs^hich he said he 
hoped he should find room for, and I hope he will ! but 
editors have decided views. . . . 

Molly and I went to "Faust" last night with Dr. B. 
and heard Melba sing in her faultless, clear voice, which 
somehow stops at faultlessness, and anything more un- 
like Marguerite could hardly be. Plan^on made a splen- 
did devil though. Ternina is still voiceless, and they have 
taken " Tristan '* off the bills in consequence, as no one 
else can sing Isolde. This seems to rather take the flavor 
out of the opera, for Ternina in Isolde was the thing we 
all looked forward to. 

I have been writing one of the Mistral legends* in a queer, 
varying metre — which was amusing to do, but I don't 
know whether it is good or bad. . . . 
Good-night and good luck to you. Affectionately always, ^ 

K. C. 

Boston, January 28, 1899. 

... I am going to let off some of my "stuck-upness" 
to you. The "burly" Mr. Page is one of the seraphim, 
for in two days he wrote me that if I were willing to 
wait a little he would like to publish three sonnets to- 
gether, as he thought they would be much more effec- 
tive that way than separately ! He kept "In the Ca- 
thedral," "Vision," and "Revelation," — the recent 
one which you saw — which isn't a sonnet by the 
way, though he calls it so, and said it would give him 
"unusual pleasure" to so print them. . . . 
* See '■^A Legend of Provence^'* in '■^ Foices.^* 

69 



Boston^ February 13, 1899. 

1WISH that some of the beauty and grandeur of Mex- 
ico and Montecito, with which your two letters are 
so full, would spread their wide, sunny influence over the 
raging, horrible blizzard now rending the air of this frigid 
city, and making the coast a place of horror. It is dreary 
enough to sit by the wood fire and see the whitened air 
storm by. What must it be in the midst of it, beyond 
reach of the friendly land ! 

Yes, I should like to go on my travels and look at a new 
external horizon, which, as you say, so often widens and 
clarifies the inner horizon too, but while life is full, and 
constantly in motion, I never feel the same need of change 
that there would be were life to stagnate. 
I know that feeling so well, of the vastness and splendor 
of nature, and the poor pettiness of personal expression, 
and the longing to touch the garment hem of an art so 
great as to rise far beyond the finite aspiration, and ex- 
press the whole splendor of things. And yet, in another 
sense, perhaps the record of one vibrating emotion, of 
one human soul, may more nearly express God than an 
epic of worlds could do — just as the pi6lure of a flower 
or a cloud may tell more of Nature than a great heroic 
landscape. None the less, one aspires to the epic ! I would 
like to express those great wind-blown sweeps of life. My 
tiny corner of life is a bit wind-blown just now, not only 
by blizzards without, but by various concerns within. 
Yet in spite of this I seem to be in a place of great calm, 
and surrounded by upholding influences that point way 
beyond small happenings. I have been writing a little, 
and also re-writing some very faulty things which I clung 
to in substance though not in form. Remodelling requires 
a much clearer head and hand, I find, than any new 
work. . . . 
Boutet de Monvel was here yesterday, having returned 

70 



to Boston. He is very nice, but seems like a rather rest- 
less spirit, not at peace with himself. At least he gives 
me that impression, as if he needed to be soothed and 
stroked and rested. 

I forgot to speak of Jack Chapman's oratory, w^hich was 
brilliant and interesting and strong, though hardly to be 
blindly followed. His independence of doctrine is fine. . . . 
I think of you among sunny mountains, breathing in new 
life. 

Boston, Sunday evening, February z6, 1899. 

... I have seen a little more of Boutet de Monvel and 
he is really a charming Frenchman, and his work is very 
sweet and human and appealing. I think I wrote you a 
rather dismal letter out of the depths of a blizzard, but 
I am not dismal, and life is wonderfully interesting and 
strange. I may send you some verses to be dissedted — 
Don't try to find a meaning in the Song because it hasn't 
got any ! I get tired of meanings sometimes, and wish I 
had the art of making pure music of words. This is not 
Lanier, for I had not seen his book. I can't make music 
yet though, so when there is no sense it is rather a sorry 
produ(5lion ! 

Boston, March 18, 1899. 

... I have just had the supreme pleasure of making a new 
friend — a real, deep-down friend I mean — Mrs. Henry 
H. She and I havp met casually, and each felt drawn 
to the other without any opportunity to get anywhere ; 
but this time we did get somewhere, and touched each 
other in the way that lasts, and I am so glad. I want 
to tell you too that G. grows on me all the time. I find 
really beautiful qualities in her, and have a convi<5lion 
that she will find a channel of expression for them some 
day, when she finds still waters. 

Thank you for the " Katzens," which delighted the chil- 

71 



dren. They are well and gay. M. has just invested her 
first real earnings (she sold a carving at Doll & Rich- 
ards') in a framed Botticelli Madonna for E/s birthday. 
Mr. P. spent last evening expounding his color scheme 
to me, and he arranges it in terms of musicy just as Lanier 
does with the Science of Verse. Truly, everything is born 
from the same centre. . . . 

I am glad you are writing with the inspiration of the 
air and the mountains. Write soon again. 

50 East Fifty-third Street, March 28, 1899. 

YES indeed, dear Harry, I have had that wonderful 
emotion of the oneness of all expressions of life 
sweep over me overpoweringly, bringing usually a great 
surging up of love for every form in which the universal 
soul lives, " Our sister, the sea, and our brothers, the bil- 
lowing hills" as you say — and every tiny blade of grass 
vibrates to the farthest star, and every human breath or 
deed is a part of the same, one Soul. It is indeed poetry. 
Would that one could clothe it in a form worthy of its 
vastness. Perhaps you will some day. 
I am actually in New York with my brother-in-law. . . . 
I do enjoy the sense of peace and rest that comes of being 
where no outward call from the manifold life that weaves 
itself about one's own environment, can come in. I am 
looking forward to an enchanting morning by a wood 
fire, with books, etc., and nothing or pobody to call me 
out or off. . . . 

It was such a beautiful evening when I came on in the 
train, day before yesterday, — I wish I could give you 
the impression of it in poetry. There had been a light 
March snow, and the sinking sun made it all violet col- 
ored. The sea in a deep harbor (New London I believe) 
was purple, and green, and still, against a red gold sky, 
and ships were floating refledted, giving something of 
72 



that big poetic sense of oneness of the comings and go- 
ings of men amid the great enfolding Nature. New York 
seems rather musty and fusty, but I think it 's the weather, 
which has gone gray and wet. . . • 



Boston, April 13, 1899. 

IT seems as if some of my letters must have stuck in 
the desert, for you speak of not hearing for long, 
and I had lately written twice, once before starting for 
New York and once there, which last has hardly had 
time to reach you. 

I enjoyed my little visit there, seeing the Gilders, Mrs. 
Holt, etc. ; and Katrine and I lunched with N. H. at Staten 
Island and made various explorations. I was unlucky in not 
finding Miss Beaux at her studio, and she wrote me such 
a nice note about it. I lunched at the Godkins' and heard 
him scold about the world at large, and yet remain an 
agreeable man to meet, and I went to a meeting of the 
Fortnightly Club — like our Tuesday Club only livelier 
and more spontaneous. We came home in time to go to 
the S. wedding, and two happier-looking people I have 
never seen. 

I do not seem to have any very "objective" poetry to 
send you yet. I tried a longish one but I think it 's a fail- 
ure. I had a beautiful time the other day in the upper 
regions of the Athenaeum, with your guiding paper in 
my hand, and after mousing round and reading here and 
there, brought home some Saints' lives in which to search 
for suggestive incidents. 

Your solitary mountain ridges sound entrancing. How 
I should like to find myself on one of them, under a 
clear sky, and over green valleys and a still sea, with 
the smell of the woods all round. N. Y. hardly supplied 
that element ! 

Mr. H.'s birthday play is to-morrow night and the chil- 

73 



dren are on the rampage. I have been struggling to get 
Jack a pair of long trousers, as he is to impersonate 
Mr, H. ! 

Tell me of your writing, of yourself, of the mountains, 
of everything, for you know how much I care to hear. 



D 



114 Beacon Street, May 10, 1899. 

EAREST Gretchen : I am involved with a den- 
tist and an approaching new cook, who will have 
to be seen to a little and established before we leave, and 
I do not see my way to more than two days and nights 
at Harvard plucked from these entanglements ! . . . I shall 
love to see you, dear, and the beautiful blossoming world 
which is like a dream now. Living would be simpler, and 
it would be easier to be good if the world always looked 
and felt like this. I drove yesterday through the Arbore- 
tum, and it was a wilderness of pink and white, and ten- 
der, vivid greens. . . . Ever your loving 

Katie. 

June, 1899. 

IT is indeed a wonderful world, and the wonder sweeps 
in upon one's heart when the door leading through 
the veil is opened for a soul we know to pass. If he suf- 
fered so much one can but rejoice ; indeed I always feel 
a deep joy interwoven with the sorrow, even when the 
life has been a full and happy one. 
I shall see you very soon, dear. 

Portsmouth, N. H., Sunday, June, 1899. 

DEAR Harry : I feel very much like taking the next 
train to Dublin and breathing the mountain air of 
spring. Possibly I can soon, though I can't be sure. I must 
settle for another day or two so as to start fair and in good 
order within and without, and then Sue is coming down 
74 



on Wednesday, and I am not sure that I can leave them 
training colts and standing on their heads generally. I will 
write again soon. 

The air is deliciously sweet with lilacs now in their 
perfection, and wild flowers are everywhere. Molly was 
made so happy by your beautiful roses on the twenty- 
third. I took her and her friends to " Romeo and Juliet," 
and six girls in a row wept over their tragic sorrows ! 

K. C. 

Portsmouth, June 13, 1899. 

. . . Dear Harry, I shall not soon forget those two lovely 
drives, or any moment of my all too brief visit, and Dub- 
lin begins to have the added charm pertaining to those 
bright, fleeting things, that flash upon one for a moment, 
and then vanish in shadow ! Some day I shall hold on to 
the skirts of this vision though, and have a good, long, 
honest look at her. . . . 

That twenty-four hours was full of sweetness, and all 
your surroundings — house, den, lake, mountain and dear 
woods — are very deep and vivid impressions. ... I look 
forward to your visit so much. 

TO E. G. S. 

THE seeds I planted lovingly 
Beneath Monadnock's majesty 
Sprang into form and beauty there. 
Breathing the glad free mountain air. 
Beside your threshold they were sown, 
Your garden held them for its own. 
And Nature nursed them till they grew 
And blossomed in the light — for you. 

I hope that I have sown as well 
In your heart's garden seed that fell 
In kindly soil — which time may rear 
To strength and beauty year by year. 

75 



So may great Nature's loving hand, 
Wielding for us her magic wand, 
Touch into quickening growth, each hour, 
The glowing life of friendship's flower. 

Beside the lake, beneath the sky, 
The flowers blossom joyously ; 
The heart has flowers fairer still 
That bloom to gladden and fulfil. 

Portsmouth^ N, H.^ June 13, 1899. 

GRETCHEN DEAR : Your letter was very sweet 
to me, and I too had thought constantly of you and 
was about to write. Yes, I felt Philip Savage's death very 
deeply, and quite strangely. The special individuality of 
each one who crosses the invisible line, makes a new kind 
of opening into unseen worlds, and gives one a new vision 
of Death. I never felt Death in just this way before : — 
an overwhelming sense of the human sadness, largely im- 
personal, and then a sudden lifting of that veil to show 
a face of divine joy. And I felt his actual presence for 
some days in a curiously persistent way, and as I stood 
a moment by his body (for I went up to the funeral) I 
spoke to him very, very strongly, as if we were face to 
face. His staunch, true nature, and his sweetness, and 
passionate love of Nature, made him very dear to me. . . . 
Your letter brought a wave of love and peace that I 
needed much, and was of deep comfort to me. 
My love to you all — always. Do write soon again. You 
do not know how much I care to hear. Yours, 

K. C. 

Sunday Morning, July, 1899. 

I THINK the little child who is so soon coming to 
you must be very full of the beauty and strength of 
nature, and of the consciousness of that deeper invisible 

76 



Nature, into whose arms the visible world is all the time 
leading us. I believe so much in the mother's consecra- 
tion and uplifting while she is carrying another death- 
less life within her own, and you feel that consecration 
so strongly, and are so well in body and mind, that I feel 
full of joy for you and the new life that you will so soon 
hold in your arms. 

The other night we had a splendid storm here, and while 
it was coming on I lay on my back in the grass looking 
up into the night that was constantly opened, as it were, 
by the great white flashes revealing all the sky. It seemed 
like a symbol of revelation and I have never felt so near 
to the inspiration and power of the visible and invisible 
worlds, and almost longed for the lightning to go through 
my heart, so that I might stand face to face with the 
unveiled Life, and know. I have such a passion to know 
sometimes — to see more clearly, and understand more 
fully the working of God in our hearts and destinies. 
I have the proof at last of the "Three Sonnets of Wor- 
ship " as Mr. Page calls them, for the "Atlantic." Molly 
has two lively girls here.-I forgot to say that she passed 
everything in the RadclifFe "finals," and is now much 
interested in modelling and carving — and sailing — . 
Constant love to you, dear. 

7«/y i8, 1899. 

DEAR Harry : . . . I was so glad of your word this 
morning. I am awfully grateful to you for sending 
the French book, which I did not get from the express 
office until to-day, and have been spending an hour or 
two in reading, and looking at it. It is very charming and 
I love some of the pictures, and all of the reading. There 
are some wonderfully poetic places — where, for instance, 
everything stands still when the Child is born — the clouds 
in the sky and the cattle about to drink, and where the 

11 



red roses and black crows all turn pure white when Mary 
is born. The pictures are not quite simple enough some- 
how to be wholly attra6live, and yet have great attra6lion, 
but one feels a certain vein of modern French artificiality 
which does n't quite go with the subjedl. The Angel 
speaking to Anne by the bird's nest, is one of the best 
I think. . . . 

I took quite a batch of things to a type-writer the other 
day, including the three finished sonnets about Paracel- 
sus, Tristan, and St. Francis. I enclose the St. Francis 
for you. We have had three becalmed mariners here for 
two days and nights. Oh, I had almost forgotten about 
Mr. and Mrs. W. of Montecito, who are staying with 
Elise H., and said they wished so much that you had 
been here at the same time, as they would have much 
liked to see you again. What a funny contrast they are ! 
He has gone cruising with T., not as a sailor, which does 
not seem to be his specialty, but as fancy cook and story- 
teller. His wife looked warily after him from the wharf, 
and thought the wind alarmingly high. They have only 
gone to Portland with two other boats : F.'s and Mr. D.'s. 
My love to you always, 

K. C. 

FRANCIS OF ASSISI 

CHRIST, let me share Thy passion through the still. 
Starred night, and know Thine hours of agony ; 
Till all my life, supremely lost in Thee, 
Is lifted where Thy love alone may fill 
Mine emptied chalice. Chasten me until 
These eyes of faith, flame-purified, shall see 
Thy face, and while Thou bendest over me. 
Merge my desires with Thine eternal will. 
I love Thee in each tender, loving thing 
Imaged of Thee ; oh give me grace to bring 
Thy little children, wandering in the night, 

78 



To the sweet silence where Thy whispers move ; 
And touch me with such miracle of love, 
That I may lift Thy lepers to the light. 

To G. O. W. Summer o/iB^g. 

DEAREST Child : Your letter has been giving me 
strength and deep comfort all day. It is a very won- 
derful thing to meet another human soul like that, and I 
am so glad and grateful that you found me, and came so 
close, in the world where our spirits always live, though we 
are conscious of it only in moments of insight. You must 
have seen, for an instant, into that ever present world, 
dear, and felt our spirits very close together there, as I 
know they are. That is why I love you so much in this 
visible world, dear. Good-night. 

Katie. 

August 22, 1899. 

DEAR Harry : . . . What do you suppose I did 
last week ? Went and took my MSS. to Little & 
Brown, and am trying to harden my heart for the recep- 
tion of a kind but firm refusal. I will let you know when 
I hear. Having handed it over I find that I care a great 
deal about the result, which seems foolish, especially as 
I am so likely to get it back. . . . 
This is a hasty scrawl while waiting to drive to the train. 
Much love to you and yours. 

Dear Harry, as the months and years go on I realize as 
never before how very much to me is your sympathy and 
friendship — and I feel this so strongly that I am just say- 
ing a little bit of it to you. AfFedlionately, 

K. C. 

August 24, 1899. 

YOU wrote me a very wonderful letter, dearest 
Gretchen, and I followed you into those solitudes 
and silences, where Sorrow leads us — and Love and Joy. 

79 



tt is the strength of life itself that opens those great vistas 
to us, and the saddest fate that life can give is lack of life. 
It may be painless, it may be good and pure — but it leads 
nowhere, and one has got to live^ and know the great 
rending pulses of the world's heart, to touch and wander 
in the world's great spaces. Yes, I too have been feeling 
that passion of service. There have been times in the 
past . . . when I have prayed to be rent and torn to the 
uttermost, if that would make me a fit instrument of 
service. ... I have been driven from one stronghold to 
another oi self — only to make another — and be driven 
from it again by divine fate. And each dream and each 
stronghold seemed high and pure, and was in part, — but 
the self took refuge there, and had to be driven forth 
naked. Now I feel freer somehow, infinitely more de- 
tached, though still a dreamer of empty dreams. Every 
dream has made life permanently richer, and in being 
abandoned has given of its very soul. So strangely are 
good and evil woven together. 

What do you suppose I did a little while ago ! Took my 
arranged and selefted poetic efforts to Little & Brown, 
and they are going to publish them this late autumn. 
Now that I have done it I rather quake at the idea, for 
they sometimes seem to me over-charged with all sorts of 
superfluous feelings, and I do hate an '* intense" New 
England woman. 

Good-night, darling. My heart's love goes out to you and 
that dear baby. In a week or two, if it be possible, I should 
love to come for a night. Yours always, 

Katie. 

Portsmouth, N. H., September 3, 1899. 

DEAR Harry : I wish you would explain more fully 
the exa6l meaning of your suggestions about writ- 
ing of "man as he is," and in a former letter about writing 
of human nature with its weaknesses, etc. You evidently 
80 



wish to lead my inexperienced pen towards the concrete 
and objeftive in art — versus the dream, rather mixed I 
fear with "sorrow and religion," which seems to you 
destru6tive to art unless transmuted, and there I think 
I agree with you. At the same time you dream of the 
" Epipsychidion," which is certainly the opposite of " man 
as he is." I have n't the least idea how to write about the 
concrete and objective life, and whenever I try I make 
a dreadful mess of it, but I should like to follow your 
thought farther on the subje6l. To me poetry is the voice 
of the dream largely, and not of the concrete and visible 
reality, excepting as that embodies the dream. Of course 
there is dramatic poetry, narrative blank verse, etc., but 
I feel now as if I might as well attempt an orchestral 
symphony as that. One feels pulled and pushed to the ex- 
pression of certain things, while other things seem quite 
intangible and formless and obscure in the realm of art. 
With me the concrete is the formless and obscure, as soon 
as I think of giving it voice, and the dream continuously 
takes form. How would you have me pursue "man as 
he is"? 

I had a delightful visit from Joe. . . . My youngest daugh- 
ter asked him to give up his matrimonial intent, and wait 
until she should be grown up. When he asked her how 
long he would have to wait for her, she replied, " Oh, an 
offle long time." 

I am uninspired just now, and feel a curiously strong 
longing for inland forests and mountains far from the 
sea, and I am thinking of taking a bag in my hand, and 
wandering somewhere for a few days, quite free of people 
and things ; not that people and things have been irking 
me, only I feel a little stale and flat, and want to draw 
a new kind of breath, and look up at the mountains. I 
think I may explore a little in quiet parts of the White 
Mountains or even as far as Lake Champlain, and the 
edge of the Adirondacks, but don't know. 

8i 



September 19, 1899. 
. . . My trip gave me a very refreshing new and deep 
breath, but Dublin w^as really the nicest part of it, and 
the devastating w^ay in which they cut the forests in the 
Adirondacks made me quite blue. There were some 
settlements of miners' and charcoal burners' log-cabins, 
dotted over hill-slopes naturally beautiful, but made deso- 
late by cutting and fire, and I wished I might find out 
about the life they led, for it excited one's imagination by 
force of dreariness and wildness, and a certain uncouth 
pidluresqueness. 

Thank you so much for sending the MSS. to Little & 
Brown. The proof is due this week. . . . The girls with 
three friends have been camping out in the shanty on our 
island, armed with cook books. They have come back 
now, enthusiastic about everything except dish-washing. 

September 27, 1899. 

DEAR Gretchen : . . . Yes, dear, I understand. 
The real world is just beyond the veil, and we 
live here in a world of reflexions, where each thought 
should lead us to make these reflections the true images 
of reality. Then we shall be ready to face the revelation 
of life and love as it awaits us. That is the way it seems 
to me ; but I do not mean by that to take away the reality 
of this picture in which we live now, or to make it a mere 
shadow. On the contrary — the more we live and touch 
that wonderful world of the Invisible, the more beauti- 
ful and great does the Visible become. The veil seems to 
have been growing thinner to me lately, and dazzling, 
vision-like gleams flash through sometimes, lighting this 
reflected world with a great radiance, and making me 
feel, so mightily, the Presence of the spirit of all that each 
life means in its depth and height — a Presence that guides 

82 



and strengthens and inspires, waiting for each soul to 

come to its own. 

Tell me how you are, dear. Your loving 

Katie. 

Portsmouth, Saturday, October 7, 1899. 

DEAR Harry : . . . I have been planting, and put- 
ting things in order for Thursday's move to town, 

when seeing you will be one of the pleasantest parts 

I had no galley proof, only page, and have just received 
the revised proof of the whole book, which I shall re- 
turn promptly, as there are delays enough at their end 
without my making any. . . . 

It is a glorious day and I feel like making the most of 
these last days in the woods. What is the comedy about ? 
I have begun a new book ! and got as far as one short 
poem and a fragment.* I like the idea in my head about 
it, but it does not seem to take shape very easily yet. 
It should be much more human if it ever arrives. Much 
love to you always from 

K. C. 

Boston, December 31, 1900. 

DEAREST Edith : It did my heart good to hear 
from you again, and yet you tell me very little of 
yourself, — what you are doing and thinking and what 
has most filled the past year since your illness. 
I was deeply glad that you and your mother care for my 
book and am so much interested in what you said of 
my finding a channel of outlet, through stress of living. 
I think it was an adlual necessity for any maintenance 
of health of mind, and I W2is forced to find out (to some 
small extent) the way to do it, when I saw how crude 
and worthless my first utterances were, through profound 

* See page 107. 

83 



ignorance of form. This winter is not very produ6live 
in that line, though I do write a little, and have a con- 
tinuous desire for it ; but M. is having her fling in the 
gay world, with unexpefted zest on her part ; the other 
four are all most a<5live in different ways, and so life is 
full, and though I am well, I attempt very little out- 
side activity this winter. 

We are about to break our finances by buying a beautiful 
old Amati violin for K., from her teacher, Mr. Loeflfler. 
It seems to me that few things are so worth while in this 
life, as the transforming touch of beauty, through art, 
which floods the work-a-day world with new inspira- 
tions, for better work and service ; and K. loves music, 
and works well, so I shall rejoice to have her own this 
lifelong possession. 

M. has suddenly blossomed into quite a worldly young 
person, as far as love of dancing, and pretty clothes, and 
swell dinners, etc., is worldly. It is a healthy phase I think, 
especially for her, with her rather serious nature. I always 
love to think of you, dear, dear Edith, and hold you very 
close. Do write to your devoted 

Katharine Coolidge. 



84 



POEMS 



MNEMOSYNE 

What were our mortal days bereft of thee, 

Goddess of memory ? 
A glint of jewels strewn without a thread, 
A gleam of life unknown, unheralded, 

A flashing, swift-blown spark 

Swept to the bosom of the dark : 
Void of thy vivid presence where would be 
The fire of life, the glory of the dead, 

Mnemosyne, Mnemosyne ! 

Mother of Muses, Song and Poesy, 

Born of the God and thee. 
Waken our world to music of the skies. 
And move the dusky shadows from our eyes. 

Till vision lifts the mist 

From our horizon's gold and amethyst; — 
There by the blessed boon of memory 
Thine immemorial stars of faith arise, 

Mnemosyne, Mnemosyne ! 

Born of thy breath, O blest Mnemosyne, 

The Muse of Tragedy 
Sweeps o'er the land, and joyous, rhythmic Dance 
Weaves through the shade her shafts of radiance. 

Where life's threads intertwine 

The sombre and the bright are thine ; 
Our hope, our pain, our gladness are of thee, — 
And all our golden Earth's inheritance, 

Mnemosyne, Mnemosyne ! 



87 



SONG 

1* ROM ocean to ocean the rainbow 
Is arching the untrodden way 

That leadeth athwart the pure heavens 
By paths of ethereal day. 

From cloudland to cloudland the color 
Is piercing all dimness with light, 

More swift with the blazon of beauty 
Than stars on their pinions of flight. 

From spirit to spirit niy message, 
Beloved, is borne o'er the sea. 

And winged with the far-flashing ether, 
Love's radiance flyeth to thee. 



88 



SONNET 

W ow God be with thee ! Hearest thou my cry, 

Called o'er the hills ; across the splendid sea ! 

I give it to the strong wind sweeping by, 

The high, white clouds shall carry it to thee. 

Swift life and joy are rushing through the air 

To be my messengers ; the tall pine sings : — 

"Oh, God be with thee," and the sunbea,ms bear 

To thee my joy of love, on flashing wings. 

It is enough to love, enough to know 

That thou art near, though land and ocean part 

Our strong, outreaching arms : while the life-glow 

Of radiant revelation lifts my heart. 

My love spans earth below and heaven above. 

With " God be ever thine, my life, my love ! " 



89 



SONNET 

1 F I could lift the curtain of this earth 

To worlds whereof our senses may not tell, 

And stand before the vast Invisible, 

Beyond the shadows of our mortal birth ; 

I would not wish to fill my spirit's dearth 

With dazzling mystery or miracle ; 

Nor seek the presence chamber where indwell 

The Powers that poise the stars in Heaven's far girth 

But I would seek to know that thou art mine 

Forever; — that our beings intertwine 

Through the unfathomed Silence; — that to me 

Thy love hath come by destiny divine 

To fold my love's deep deathlessness to thine ; 

For in all worlds my spirit seeks but thee. 



90 



IN IMMEMORIAL WORLDS 

1 N immemorial worlds of timeless birth, 
God wove thy thread of being fast with mine ; 
Before we touched the bosom of the earth, 
My soul had passed through ages close to thine ; 
For when we met and loved, incarnate here, 
So naturally I looked on thy dear face, 
That memory woke to know that thou wert near 
In habitations bounded not in space. 
Where we have wandered in our spirits' flight. 
Come Life, come Death, our lives will intertwine 
In sun and shadow through the Infinite : 
Forever and forever thou art mine. 



91 



SONNET 

When thou art near the heaven is more blue, 

The earth enshrines a deeper tenderness ; 

Each breath of wind embodies a caress, 

And every flower is clothed in brighter hue. 

When thou art far my thoughts in vain pursue 

All fleeting beauty : the sun's light is less, 

The night starred silence hath no power to bless, 

Nor may the forest calm my strength renew. 

For Nature's light is lost in love's despair ; 

Her sanftuary veiled to stricken prayer ; 

But when to wakening joy my heart is thrilled. 

The treasures of her spirit are laid bare, 

And in the passion of the earth and air. 

She opens wide her arms to love fulfilled. 



92 



SONNET 

l_iOVE lifts my heart like music to a place 

Where passion's light, freed from the spirit's shrine, 

Floods all the air and melts the earth's confine 

To sweep beyond the firmaments of space. 

Illumined by this light my sense can trace 

The paths of pain and rapture ; can divine 

All hearts, and tenderness unguessed is mine 

To enfold all living things in one embrace. 

Beloved, thou, by being, hast given to me 

This gift supernal, breathed on me God's breath ; 

For through the miracle of loving thee 

Life's sw^eetest revelation openeth 

The beauty of those w^orlds man may not see, 

Until, transformed of love, he entereth. 



93 



"TRISTAN UND ISOLDE" 
(Isolde's Love-Death) 

J-/OOSE now the bonds of sense, that sense may be 

The minister of music, and unbound, 

Wafted away on vibrant wings of sound, 

I may ascend till Vision touches me. 

Higher and mightier swells the harmony, 

Till earth light fades, and lifted from the ground, 

Borne on the breast of Life and circled round 

By voices of the air, — lo, I am free ! 

Free in the soaring passion of the hour ; 

Floating on paeans of ascending power 

That cleave the clouds to reach the heavenly height. 

And thou art with me ; thy life one with mine : 

One soul, — one breath, — swept in a dream divine 

To wonder-worlds that lie beyond the night. 



94 



SONNET 

When Passion folds his flame-like wings in rest, 

And Peace, white vestured, comes from crystal skies, 

The world's light changes to my tired eyes 

Left looking blindly for the glow possessed 

Of Passion. O'er the mountains' amber crest 

The gold shines paler when the long day dies, 

And ruby blazons of the morning rise 

Less gloriously above the ocean's breast. 

Give me, O God, Thine own unchanging light ; 

Touch me with fire that fades not in a day. 

Till all my deadened senses thrill to Thee ; 

So Love shall once more crown the earth and sea. 

And Thy hand lead me by the inspired way 

Of Peace and Passion, — one and infinite. 



95 



SONNET 

JVluTE was my harp, with tremulous, waiting strings, 

Till he, the master, touched its power to motion ; 

To surging sound as wild as the free ocean ; 

Glad as the buoyant flash of soaring wings. 

Responsive to his hand the inviolate springs 

Of life throbbed into voice. In rapt devotion 

He swept the strings to glories of emotion ; 

Yielding to sovereign love rich offerings. 

Death called the master, and my harp grown dim. 

Yet quivering, no longer knoweth peace ; 

For played upon by every wandering breath, 

It singeth on and on, and murmureth 

His name in every note till earth tones cease : 

Ah then each perfedl chord shall rise to him ! 



96 



SONNET 

JVIy sorrowing sister, lift your weary eyes; 

For though Death bears the bravest from our sight 

Far down the arcana of the silent night, 

And we are left to search the unfathomed skies ; 

Yet close beside our daily pathway lies 

The secret if our hearts may read aright. 

Writ on the meadow's green, the lily's white, 

And in the rubied gold of glad sunrise. 

Beauty, the messenger, whose god-like hand 

Purples the mountain peak, touches the land 

With moving shadows, glorifies the sea ; 

Whose breath infuses every leaf and flower 

With ecstasy of an immortal power. 

Prophetic of the wonderland to be. 



97 



FUTURE AND PAST 

I 

JJEFORE the tide of life had cast adrift 

My destiny, I looked one starless night 

Beyond time's cloudland, and prophetic light 

Shone on the future, flashing far and swift 

Across my vision. As the sea mists lift 

Before the wind, so to my opened sight 

Stirred the earth's vaporous veil, till piftures bright 

And starry shimmered through the rift. 

I did not see the lowering, storm-swept way 

Where fate has led me since that childlike hour ; 

I did not see my lonely wanderings : 

I only saw, across time's shadowy sway. 

The promise and the glory, where God's power 

Glowed in strong triumph through all passing things. 



98 



FUTURE AND PAST 

II 

Down the dim arches of the lengthening past 

Throng hosts of landmarks and strong memories, 

Under wide stretches of illumined skies ; 

But where the heavens are darkly overcast 

My vision passes by. Those memories last 

That glow with vivid sunlight ; where there lies 

A deathlike shadow, there the pidlure dies, 

Or blends in brilliance where the lights are massed. 

Whichever way I look, whether it be 

Forth to the future's unrecorded flight, 

Or backward where past picture-lands have shone, 

Through misty depths of mortal pain I see 

The strength of gladness, and the sun-clad height ; 

Always the darkness dies, the light lives on. 



99 



LofC. 



SONNET 

Across the pallid cloudiness of care, 

Lifting our jaded hearts above the din 

And fret of trivial worlds, a light flows in,— 

A glory and a gladness fills the air 

With animation. High above the wear 

Of daily detail, and the smoke of sin. 

Sent through the silence comes a word to win 

One upward look to worlds supremely fair. 

The heavenly heralds, vocal of this light. 

Are many: lilies lustrous in the sun, 

A strain of music floating through the night, — 

The halo on the hills when day is done. 

Call our wan lives to that revealing height 

Where strenuous calm and puissant joy are won. 



100 



SONNET 

OwiFT as a river rolling to the sea, 

Strong as the star-worlds circling through the night, 

Silent and irresistible as light, 

God's deathless will moves mortal destiny. 

To find the onward flooding force, to see 

The drift that leads beyond our sight. 

Is peace and towering strength ; fondly to fight 

Against the rhythmic stream is slavery. 

Blindfold we 're swept within this world of fate. 

Unknowing of the Will that compasses 

Each littlest life, potential of its goal : 

Blindfold we battle while the angels wait 

Sorrowing, till we yield our fealties. 

Clear-sighted, to the all-possessing Soul. 



lOI 



TO F. P. 

Jdeyond the fire-enchanted, western sky, 

Your feet have trod the trackless solitude, 

Where silver-topped, dark-mantled mountains brood 

O'er bright ravines, and giant streams roll by. 

Deep in the forest heart your heart beat high 

With love of the great silences that wooed 

Your spirit to the wealth of Nature's mood, 

In inspiration, strong to testify. 

To tell the story of wild woodland war. 

Of dusky neophyte and fervent priest. 

Primeval Nature gave her brimming store 

Of strenuous life, and till her voices ceased, 

Your steadfast will pursued your life-long course, — 

Passionate puritan, master of your force ! 



102 



FRAGMENT 
Leonardo's Joconde 

He painted her with veiled, unseeing eyes, 
That hold the spirit of some mystery 
Elusive as the light of twilight skies 
Or mist of morning mirrored in the sea. 
Beneath the shadow of her soul, she seems, 
With unrevealing smile, to hear a strain 
Of dim, far-distant music, born of dreams 
In worlds that float beyond our world's domain. 



103 



SONG 

Here at this moment of Earth's day, 
I would so live with quickened power, 
That every step of the glad way 
Should beat full measure to Life's hour. 
I would rejoice to harvest here 
The fruits of the resplendent sun, 
Reaping the riches of each year 
Until this golden life be done. 

So would I live, and yet for thee 
My longing is so strong all day, 
That every murmur of the sea. 
Each aureoled cloud that floats away, 
The breath of rose and asphodel 
And clear star voices from above 
Call — "Come to the Invisible, 
For there thy life shall find thy love." 



104 



FRAGMENT 

JN OT for the guerdon of a heaven to be, 
Would I return to level lands where move 
The unawakened ones ; better to prove 
The pinnacle, than pasture on the lea. 
Though fallen from all too dazzling stress of light. 
Wounded, I lie beneath the precipice ; 
My heart reflects for aye its heavenly glow^. 
And the dear shadow of the mountain's height. 



105 



WANDERERS 

1 HEAR the songs of the children of men 

Who have wandered far in search of a dream, 
In the wilderness, through the arch of night. 
The sound of their voices rings heavenward when 
Their half-hidden goal's starry vistas gleam 
On their searching eyes, with a sudden light. 

Woman or warrior, pilgrim or priest. 

World-toiler or prince, who has seen the sky 
Quiver and change to the touch of a god. 
From the western hills to the ocean's east, — 
Must answer the call when the fire flames high 
To the unknown silence of paths untrod. 

From centuries past to the day that is come. 
By the city's mart, or the temple's shrine, 

On the dust-dim road, or the mountain height, - 
The dreamers of Earth and her wanderers roam, 
Still seeking the secret their hearts divine. 
Serving in gladness their vision of light. 

I hear the songs of the children of men. 
Lovers and workers, aflame with the fire 
Flashed into their hearts in life-giving gleams. 
The strength of their voices rings heavenward when 
They follow the lead of their winged desire 
To the goal of God, to the Dream of dreams. 



io6 



FRAGMENT 

I 

1 NWOVE and interlaced ethereally 

Within the myriad sounds keyed low to earth 

Rises a voice of immemorial winds 

And world-old waters, like a thread of silver 

Far lilting music dreaming through the air. 

Held in the magic note Earth's discords waver, 

Lifted to harmony her symphonies 

Surge into sweeter power, and things imagined 

In some bewildering night when long-dead stars 

Speak from the timeless height of flashing heavens 

Burst into vision through the senses* yearning. 



107 



FRAGMENT 
II 

God, she whispered through the growing gloom, 
Are these Thy people and is this Thy world ? 

1 see men hurry hard-faced on their way, 
And women borne down by the motherhood 
Meant for the joy and glory of their days ; 
Wan children, drifting by benighted ways, 
Unmothered and unnurtured of broad heavens. 
Of fields abloom, and surging meadow streams ; 
A city of sad streets where pallid girls 
Wrapped in limp panoply of wanton woe 
Barter their womanhood for passing gold, 
Flinging a priceless mystery to the filth 
Ingathered of Earth's ages. Let me hear 

A voice of hope across the wilderness, 
Some vision of a love with power to purge 
This endless flow of mortal misery. 



108 



FRAGMENT 

III 

In the dark 
Above the dusty street of shame and sin, 
Unheard of multitudes, the constant Voice 
Called in the words of immemorial winds 
And world-old waters ; and one little child 
Alone, unheeded, listened and forgot 
For one immortal moment his wan world, 
While all the beauty born of golden heavens 
And all the opal glories of the sea. 
The lyric cadences of ancient rivers. 
The singing winds' heart-moving melody. 
Came from the broad earth's holiest sweetest places 
And moved upon the waters of his soul. 

The darkness dies, the light lives on forever ; 

So sang the rolling river, 
So spake the stars from their imperious heights. 



109 



FROM THE BOSOM OF NIGHT— 

I 

Jf ROM the bosom of night to the waiting sky, 
A flame up-quivering flashed its way 
Through the still, sweet air, and vanished high 
Mid the starless heavens. The silvery grey 
Of the summer sea reflected the light, 
And the low wind whispered of mysteries 
That mount like stars through the listening night, 
And win their way to the watching skies. 

II 

Was it a prayer from the saint in his cell, 

Or a soul sped forth by the hand of Death, 

Through darkness to worlds invisible, — 

A trembling flame as fleet as a breath ? 

Was it the cry of a mother's heart. 

Or the upward glow of a lover's might. 

Burning a path to the uttermost part 

Of the watching sky, from the bosom of night ? 



IIO 



FROM THE BOSOM OF NIGHT — 

III 

Whether it be the saint's strong prayer, 
Or a soul sped forth through the darkened sky 
Like a trembling torch in the shadowy air; — 
Be it a mother's impassioned cry, 
Alight with the glow of her soul's desire, 
Or a flame-winged voice from a lover's heart ; 
'T is a mounting spark of the sacred fire 
From the altar of Life, and the uttermost part 
Of the watching heavens is glad to-night; — 
Glad, when the children of men build high 
This altar of Life, for the fervent light 
To burn a path to the peaceful sky. 

IV 

Soft o'er the silent summer sea. 
From unknown lands, the night wind came, 
And tenderly whispered these words to me : 
"Life is a fire, flame leaps to flame ; 
The heart that knows the power of strife, 
And the passion of prayer, and the light of love. 
Wins for the earth new paths of Life, 
To the starry calm of the worlds above." 



Ill 



MOTHERHOOD 

I 

Ohe called into the void, her heart afire 

With nameless longing for some end unknown 
Waiting in worlds afar, invisible. 
Unconscious of the goal her full desire 

Cried blindly for the strength of life alone. 
And lo, the answer was a miracle. 
The spirit of her dream made flesh drew near, 
Bringing a breath of heaven to wander here. 

When the first flutter of incarnate life 

Stirred in her breast, a new-found tenderness 
As infinite as the creative Love 
Moved in her motherhood, and visions rife 
With sweet fulfilments stole like a caress 
Over her soul ; presences close above. 
Strong and unseen, whispered at evening's hour. 
Calling her forth with strange, revealing power. 



112 



MOTHERHOOD 

II 

She seemed to stand beside a mighty river, 
The deep, resistless waters of life's flood 
Surging through time in vivid majesty. 
She touched the tide that pushes on forever, 
And felt life's splendor stirring in her blood, 
Drawing her close to the great mystery, 
That moves within the bosom of the earth, 
And bursts to beauty through the veil of birth. 

She called with clearer voice across the night. 
Until the answer trembled through all space 
Where life awaits the wonder-gift of birth ; 
And when her new-born nestled to the light. 
Held in the human warmth of her embrace, 
She knew the secrets of the budding earth, 
While all awakened, her heart understood 
The eternal word that speaks through motherhood. 



"3 



BE STILL 

X EACE to your throbbing hearts," the Silence said ; 
" Ye children of the Earth, seeking your bread 
On barren fields, ye waste the breath of God 
In wanton cries and struggles. To and fro 
Across the patient ground your feet have trod 
With restless toil, hearkening not to know 
What song of life is floating overhead, 
Whilst ye oppress the quick and mourn the dead. 

"Like children lost 'neath noble arches where 
A mighty music fills the incensed air, 
Ye drown the paeans by your clamorous cries, 
Unconscious of the calm of these high halls, 
Unlistening to the symphonies that rise 
Majestic ; deafened by din while Heaven calls 
Across the feverous tumult, to declare 
The Word in accents infinitely fair. 

" Here, the gods wait in wonder while ye weep. 
And shout, and die, close to the songs that sweep 
In rich, revealing beauty through the world. 
Be still, immortal men," the Silence said ; 
" Lift up your eyes and ye shall see unfurled 
Great glories of the living and the dead ; 
Listen, and while the earth-born voices sleep, 
The Word shall sound from Heaven's eternal deep." 



114 



THE LILY AND THE FROZEN SEA 

A LILY grew beside a frozen sea, 
Above the shimmering snow, 
Long, long ago. 
In sunlit passion of pure ecstasy. 

Horizoned in pale gold far, far away; 
Made motionless by breath 
Of loving Death, 
Gloriously white the frozen ocean lay. 

Tender and tall the gleaming lily grew. 
Her heart untouched of Death, 
Filled with a breath 
Down wafted from the heaven's vibrating blue. 

Oh, Death and Life, — lily and frozen sea! 
Aflame with wonder-light 
Of infinite 
Up-quivering passion of pure ecstasy ! 



115 



THE MYSTERY OF THE MIST 

1 HE Mystery of the Mist is calling me 
Across the marshes' silvery solitudes 
By phantom inlets and grey bordering woods 
To surging silence of a hidden sea. 

Swathed in a twilight haze of amethyst, 
Beyond the salty sedges lies the verge 
Of immemorial oceans' endless surge 

Entranced by the still Mystery of the Mist. 

Her hair, fog-woven, gleams across my gaze, 
I touch her garment by the silent sea, 
And would behold the face of Mystery, 

Close-clouded in the tender purple haze. 

Low-whispered voices of her wildering spell 
Allure me softly to the tremulous brink 
Of waters wide and strange, where souls may sink 

In waves mist-mantled, arms invisible. 



ii6 



THE MYSTERY OF THE MIST 

If I could sway the curtain of the night, 
And pierce the vapory darknesses that rise 
To hide the revelation in her eyes, 

Soft quivering on the very marge of sight; 

If I might disenchant the spellbound space. 
To see beyond the veil that may not move 
For mortals; if my soul and sense could prove 

The beauty of her mist-enfolded face; 

Perchance her loving penalty vi^ould be 
To lay a darkness on my earthly sight. 
And lead me forth to lands of other light 

Far out beyond these marshes by the sea. 



117 



APR 1 " 1902 



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